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.

Book Thoughts: Connections to History

Image via Wikipedia

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. It's a tragic event in our national history - 146 people, mostly young immigrant women, died because of unsafe working conditions. When a fire broke out in the factory at 4:40 PM on Saturday, March 25th 1911, the workers on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors found they were locked in. The fire escape tore away from the building, the elevators couldn't move fast enough to ferry the workers to the ground, and the fire department's ladders only reached up to the sixth floor. In desperation, many of the young workers chose to leap from the windows - choosing almost certain death from the fall over suffocation or burning to death.

It's an important part of history - of immigration, worker's rights, and women's rights. And yet I never learned about it in school - I was introduced to the fire through the book Ashes of Roses that I read on my own my senior year of high school. Auch's description of Rose in the fire was incredibly powerful, so much so that the book has stuck with me for almost 10 years and I've included it on my list of Feminist YA novels.

I think part of the reason I have remained fascinated by the Triangle fire is because it was the first historical event that was introduced to me solely through fiction. I've always read historical fiction - it might not be my favorite genre but I don't go out of my way to avoid it. However, I tend to gravitate towards stories that back up a prior interest - like the Salem Witch Trials or the Civil War. I picked up Ashes of Roses because of its connection to women's history, and was bluntly introduced to a tragic aspect of history that had never been mentioned in any of my history classes.


Since Ashes of Roses, historical fiction has become a much larger part of my reading repertoire. I can't say it's an absolute favorite genre because the quality can vary so much between books - good historical fiction must be well written and well researched, while a well written SF novel can entertain me even if some of the science is off. However, I'm always looking for the next story that will fill in the gaps I might not even know I have - like Between Shades of Gray and the Soviet deportations of Lituanians and other Baltic citizens, or Daughter of Xanadu and the life of a warrior princess in 14th century Mongolia.

And I swear I wasn't planning on writing this post when I posted two historical fiction reviews this week!

In commemoration of the fire and its victims, the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition has organized events both online and around the US, for this weekend. If you can't be in NYC, the official commemoration will be streamed online. In addition, two documentaries have been airing this week, one on HBO and the other on PBS (available to stream online!). I haven't had a chance to watch either yet, but I hope to this weekend.

For me, one of the greatest ironies of the Triangle Fire was that the building was toted as being utterly modern in that it was fireproof. And indeed the exterior was - the building is now the Brown Building and its used for NYU classes. Unfortunately for the 146 garment workers and their families, similar advances in technology weren't used on the interior. Today, take a moment to remember those workers, and those who came after them who fought tirelessly to try to ensure such a tragedy didn't happen again.

Review: I Am J by Cris Beam

A book about a transgender teenage boy of color. Excellent. A book about a transgender teenage boy of color that I can recommend because it's a great book not just because it fills a void? Awesome.

For as long as he can remember, J has been positive that he is actually a boy. Unfortunately, the rest of the world doesn't see him that way - to his parents, he is still Jeni, their beloved daughter, despite the short hair, boxers, and baggy male clothes. All his life, J has hoped and prayed for some sort of miracle - that he'd wake up one day and be in the body he belongs in. A few months before his 18th birthday, the next best thing happens: he discovers testosterone shots, the best chance he has before surgery of starting to look how he feels.

Comfortable in his decision to truly live the way he sees himself, J still has a host of obstacles to overcome. Parents that don't want to lose their daughter. A self-absorbed best friend that J might have feelings for. And the cute girl at the downtown Starbucks that definitely has feelings for J - without knowing what he's hiding beneath his layers of clothes. But J is determined that nothing will distract him from his ultimate goal - living as the man he wants to be.

Some of J's struggles are incredibly intense. Reading about the discord between him and his parents was terribly painful, mostly because both of J's parents seem like real people. They're well-meaning, but flawed, blinded by their love for the child they want to be raising rather than the child they have. We see more of J's mother than his father, but his father still makes quite an impact on the scenes he's in.

I loved that, unlike many other LGBT novels, the angst and main conflict in this doesn't stem from J questioning his identity and freaking out over it - from page one J knows that he should have been born in the body of a boy, and the conflict arises from his struggle to get the rest of the world to recognize the validity of that feeling. However, I'm not quite sure I buy the fact that J didn't learn about testosterone or chest binders until he was almost 18 - not when he says he's seen pictures of sexual reassignment surgeries online. But it's about the only convenient coincidence in the novel, and having J learn about these at the start of the novel means we aren't subjected to awkward info-dumps on Trans 101.

This is a beautifully multicultural book - one that reflects what New York City actually looks like. All sizes, shapes, colors, genders, and sexual orientations are represented in a very organic way. The downside is this also means the darker side of people comes out sometimes - it was a little uncomfortable to see gay and trans characters calling bisexuals "gross," but it does go to show that just because you are a member of one oppressed group, that doesn't mean you magically understand and love all others.

Being a cisgendered woman, I can't comment on whether J's story is actually authentic or not - all I can say is that it feels totally real, both the good and the bad parts. Beam includes an author's note that details her research process - she's written a nonfiction book about transgender teen girls and the ideas for J's story sprung from her notes and research on transgender boys that didn't fit into her nonfiction work. She definitely seems like she's done the research, and has done an excellent job of shedding light on an under-represented community.

Reviewed from an ARC picked up at ALA annual 2010. I Am J is now available - check it out soon!

Review: Another Pan by Daniel & Dina Nayeri

I knew going in that this was a sequel of sorts to Another Faust, which I totally missed out on. However, I was interested enough in the Peter Pan aspect to want to give it a shot. Considering that the jacket makes no mention that this is part of a series, I figured I was in the clear. And in a way, I was: only one character returns here from Another Faust, and she seems to stand up well enough on her own. However, when it came to actually enjoying the book...

Another Pan is set at the exclusive Marlowe school in Manhattan, where largely discredited Egyptologist Professor Darling is a teacher who has just scored a great exhibit of Ancient Egyptian artifacts on loan from the British Museum. The artifacts relate to his life's work: uncovering a Death goddess that was an alternative to Anubis, and discovering the truth behind the legends in the Book of Gates - legends that are supposed to hold the key to immortality.

Roped into helping their father set up the exhibit, 16 year old Wendy and 13 year old John would rather be elsewhere - Wendy with her jock boyfriend and John developing his street cred. But when a charismatic new RA by the name of Peter shows up, who has an obsession of his own with the ancient book, Wendy and John eagerly join his quest. Wendy is drawn to the dangerous Peter, despite her boyfriend and her father's disapproval. John craves acceptance, and longs to be seen by Peter as being worthy of joining his Lost Boys gang. As the underworld begins to take hold of Marlowe, and a conniving assistant from the British Museum also closes in on the truth about the books, the two Darlings and Peter are in a race to complete their quest first - to find the secrets to immortality before death catches up with them, permanently.

Lurking at the periphery of most of the story is the new, decrepit school nurse, who was apparently the governess in Another Faust. It's clear that part of her story has been told elsewhere, but the lack of detail didn't seem to impede the story.

What did impede the story? The pacing and the characters. This was a slow, slow book. I wanted to give up several times, but forced myself to keep going, mostly because I have a huge weakness for Ancient Egypt (even though it seems the stories of the Book of Gates are totally new with no relation to myths that are currently known) and also because many of the nods back to Peter Pan were quite clever. The pacing felt off, and the overall writing felt stilted. The third person point of view wasn't used naturally, and there were weird line breaks within the chapters; instead of using a break to indicate a change in place or time, sometimes they would be used to denote a switch in POV character - but other times would be used traditionally. It pulled me out of the story every time.

Most of the characters were extremely flat. Simon Grin was practically a cartoon villain - I kept waiting for him to start muttering how he would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids. Wendy and John were easily manipulated, though a lot more time was invested in John and his motivations so he was slightly more sympathetic. Really the most intriguing character for me was Peter, and that was probably me trying to fit this slick and handsome young adult into the story of the perpetual child I know.

In any re-telling, I love finding the ties back to the original story, and here many of them were quite clever. There's the obvious Barrie Auditorium (which still gets cleverness points, because Peter Pan was originally a play), but then little things like Peter always hanging out by windows, or checking out his shadow. His Lost Boys gang is also constantly plying Peter with happy thoughts (often things relating to youth or staying young) whenever he starts to get grumpy, though the rationale behind it is never explained.

But ultimately, this was a frustrating read. There was just enough intrigue with the myths and the quest that kept me turning the page, but I was always thinking ahead, hoping the book would finally end so I could move on to something else. While part of me is curious about what connections this had to the previous book, I don't want to have to wade through a similarly tedious book to get there, so I think this is my first and only encounter with the "Another" series.

Review: Jumpstart the World by Catherine Ryan Hyde

This one's been on my TBR list for awhile, but it's such a slim book that I put off reading it for awhile after picking it up from the library - short books like this I usually finish up in less than two subway rides, leaving me bored and bookless for part of my commute home. But then I heard some Printz rumblings for this and figured that a lazy Saturday night spent in bed, where I was trying to rest and kick the last bit of my week-long cold, was the perfect time to pick it up.

When Elle's mother picks up a new boyfriend that doesn't want to deal with a teenager in the house, she's set up in her own apartment on the other side of New York City. For most almost-16 year olds, this would be a dream come true, but Elle's just angry that her mother is pushing her aside for the comfort of her newest boyfriend - who, by the way, is taking her mother on a cruise over Elle's 16th birthday. There are only two good things about the new apartment: getting to pick out a new cat (a scared, scarred black cat, the antithesis of everything her mother likes), and her new neighbors - specifically Frank, who may be older and has a girlfriend, but Elle can't help immediately forming a little crush on him.

The new boyfriend also doesn't want to pay for Elle's private school, so she's starting a new school year at a new school, where the only people interested in being friendly are a group of outsiders, most of whom happen to be gay.

When Elle isn't sure she wants to be friends with this group - not that she's homophobic or anything - Frank is the one that listens to her. Frank and his girlfriend invite Elle over for homemade chicken soup, and introduce her to the wonders of photography. Just as Elle begins to acknowledge she's falling for Frank and falling hard, she's shocked to discover that "Frank" hasn't always been Frank - he is, in fact, a transgendered man. The truth turns Elle's world upside down, forcing her to search for the true meanings of friendship and family.

The writing here is spare but thoughtful, and feels very much like we have a direct line to Elle's thoughts. On that level I can totally see why there was Printz buzz for this. On the other hand, there's a stunning lack of character development. Elle, Frank and Elle's new school friend, Wilbur, are the only three that get any sort of depth, but even Frank and Wilbur feel more like stock characters. Here's how bad it was for me: at one point, Elle's cat is sick and needs to be given antibiotics twice a day. At the same time, one of the other characters ends up in the hospital and Elle is spending most of her time there. During this dramatic time, all I could think was that she needed to keep giving the cat antibiotics or it was going to die. I know my great love of cats probably makes me biased, but I really shouldn't have more sympathy for a cat than human characters.

Hyde does do a good job presenting Frank as just another character and never slips into being too didactic about the particulars of trans life. Details of Frank's transition, and of continuing issues as part of his trans identity, are integrated into the story and only those bits that have an impact on what's happening at the moment are included. I note this because the last book I read with a transgendered character was Almost Perfect, which did stop to explain the minutiae of transitioning. However, the presence of a transgendered character is about the only similarity between the two novels (I still highly recommend Almost Perfect - and, of course, so did the Stonewall Award committee!).

Review: The Turning: What Curiosity Kills by Helen Ellis

Found via: Forever Young Adult

When I was 12 years old, I received my first Animorphs book (#2, The Visitor) in my Easter basket. Did my mom choose it because it was excellently reviewed, popular science fiction with a diverse and engaging cast of characters?

No.

She picked it out because there was a girl turning into a cat on the cover, and I liked cats.

Since the Animorphs books aren't being re-printed until Spring 2011, I think 12-year-old-me would be getting The Turning: What Curiosity Kills for Christmas 2010. And the girls-turning-into-cats thing isn't even the only bit these two books have in common.

Having been adopted into an elite Manhattan family at a young age, all Mary wants to do is fit in. While her sister Octavia is outspoken and brash, Mary attempts to be normal and unassuming in every way possible - even if that means the boy she's crushing on hardly knows she exists. When she starts feeling tired all the time and having weird cravings, Mary can write that off as a growth spurt. But what about her sudden dislike of running water? And an amazing sense of smell? Oh, and the thick patch of orange hair that sprouted on her leg after a run in with the neighborhood stray?

Mary is far from normal, it turns out. Bit by bit, she's transforming into a cat, at a time when there's a bit of a power struggle happening between different cat factions in New York City - and each side wants Mary to join them, when all Mary wants is to return to her normal life. Enlisting the aid of Octavia, who has some excellent research skills on top of her sauciness, Mary desperately searches for a way to end her turning before there's no turning back.

So aside from turning into a cat, what does this book have in common with Animorphs? The length. This book goes at a ridiculously quick pace, and it's one of the few stories that I wish were a hundred pages longer just so everything can be slightly more fleshed out. There are lots of details that are glossed over - like there are bits where cats will speak to Mary, with their dialog indicated in italics. It's never explained whether these cats are psychic and are putting fully formed phrases in Mary's head, or if maybe Mary is just translating cat behaviors into human speech. The ending is also quite abrupt, which is no problem if the next installment is coming out in a month or two, but leaves us hanging in the worst way when the wait between titles is indefinite (Google revealed nothing about book 2 of The Turning and Helen Ellis' website isn't the easiest to navigate. I'm not a fan of video blogs). This isn't a book with a cliff hanger ending - the climax finishes and then...the end. No denouement, no closure, and no real indication of what could happen next.

Octavia has gotten some blogger love, as she well should. First of all, she's a debate geek, and while I technically didn't do debate, forensics was debate-adjacent, so I love that about her. At first she comes across as a horrible sassy-black-girl stereotype, but Ellis does an excellent job of revealing why Octavia presents herself the way she does. Very interesting.

Also thought it was interesting that both Mary and Octavia are adopted. At first it's totally random and seems like it's just a way to put two non-New-Yorker characters (Mary is originally from Alabama, Octavia from Nebraska) in the big city. So far it hasn't added a lot to Mary, but again it adds some real depth to Octavia's character, as the girl who appears to totally have it all together does in fact have some deep rooted insecurities tied to being adopted.

This is a fun, short read with an interesting twist to the ever-expanding genre of fantasy and paranormal creatures taking over YA. Not a book I'd necessarily run out to get, but certainly fun once you dive in.

Review: Illyria by Elizabeth Hand

Illyria won the World Fantasy Award for best novella back in 2008, when it was published in the UK. Now, I have nothing to do with the World Fantasy Award (which is probably a good thing considering my general apathy for the genre), but looking at some of the other winners, this one doesn't quite seem to fit.

Madeline and Rogan think of themselves as two halves of the same soul. Children of identical twins who share a birthday themselves, they are inseparable as children - an intense friendship that grows into an intense love as they enter their teen years.

Multiple generations of their large family all live on the same block, all descended from a great stage actress, though Madeline and Rogan are the only ones who have retained a love of theatre and performing, encouraged by their great aunt who appreciates the art of theatre, though doesn't seem to perform herself.

When cast as the stars of Twelfth Night in a school production (Madeline as Viola, Rogan as Feste), Madeline and Rogan must begin to confront their separate talents and where they might lead them, even as their relationship grows in intensity in the face of adversity.

Notice how in that description there isn't much that would really fall into a "fantasy" story? It's more like what one of my college professors called magical realism. This is a rather straightforward story about two extraordinarily close cousins who face some adversity because of their peculiar talents and relationship. The fantasy/magical element comes from an apparently enchanted miniature theatre they find embedded in the walls of the attic, where the lovers escape for their illicit trysts.

While published as a YA novel, the only resemblance this has to most YA is the ages of the protagonists - but in some ways I never felt like I was reading about teenagers because Madeline is telling this story as a middle aged adult. I had only a tenuous connection with her during the high school phase, but I totally lost it once she skipped ahead to briefly show her life as an adult, and how her and Rogan's decisions from back in their high school days had panned out as adults. 

The romance between Madeline and Rogan is heady and impulsive - and yes, they are cousins, but really, we're still grossed out by that these days? Their familial relationship isn't fetishized - rather Madeline sees them as two halves of one whole, and it's the most natural thing in the world for them to come together. Maybe if someone in the extended family modeled a healthy relationship, or tried to speak to the kids frankly and without judgment, things would have turned out differently, but as-is, the romance was the least-problematic aspect for me.

Review: Sellout by Ebony Joy Wilkins

Found via: Reading in Color

I've said it before and I'll say it again: my social justice weak points are gender, sexual orientation, race and class. When a book hits any one of those sweet spots, I give it at least a second glance. Hit two or more, and its assured a spot on my to-read list. I've been waiting on this one since April, when Ari highlighted it as her Waiting on Wednesday title, since it looked like it was going to squarely hit race and class head on.

NaTasha is the only Black girl in her affluent New Jersey suburb. She spends a week every summer with her grandmother in Harlem, but otherwise NaTasha spends all of her time with her white girlfriends, doing things like silly contests to see whose hair grows the longest during the school year - a contest NaTasha knows she can't win with her nappy hair, even if her mom irons it straight regularly.

After a ballet recital where NaTasha's attempts to fit in with her white peers have disastrous results, her grandmother, Tilly, decides a mere week in Harlem isn't enough. NaTasha is going to spend most of her summer in the city, working with her grandmother at Amber's Place, a community center for troubled girls up in the Bronx.

After her first day at Amber's Place, NaTasha is sure she won't fit in with these girls any better than the white girls back home. For while these girls have brown skin, they immediately peg NaTasha as a sellout - someone who acts white and thinks she's better than her Black peers. But NaTasha decides to stick it out a bit longer, out of respect to Tilly, and hopes that sooner rather than later she really will find herself.

I totally understood Tilly's desire for NaTasha to get in touch with her roots. Her actions at the ballet recital (weaving scarves into her hair to give the illusion of a hair bun) indicate on some level that she's embarrassed or ashamed of who she is. Some time up in Harlem could do her some real good, showing her how other African American women love and accept the way they look. However, making her volunteer at Amber's Place really came out of nowhere. What is NaTasha supposed to learn from girls that have been abused, and even continue to abuse themselves? And then making NaTasha take part in the activities like she was just another girl - of course she and the girls are going to clash! To them, NaTasha doesn't have a real problem in the world. And in some ways, I felt that sending her to Amber's Place did make light of NaTasha's problems - they are rather "first world" problems (you need to feel that your basic needs are being met - food, shelter, safety - before you can start worrying about your identity and fitting in socially), but that doesn't make them any less real for NaTasha.


The other girls at Amber's Place, however, are totally and heartbreakingly real. Each of them has a story to tell, and especially Shaunda's and Monique's will make you rage at the injustices of the world that two otherwise bright young women would feel they are deserving of anything less than love and respect. Quiana, NaTasha's primary tormentor, also has a story to tell, making her anger perfectly understandable.


Once NaTasha gets to Harlem, the story really picks up and I enjoyed it - it's just the framing device, getting NaTasha into Harlem and the Bronx, falls a little flat and could have been handled with much more depth.

Review: The Summer Before by Ann M. Martin

The book series in elementary school for me was the Baby-Sitter's Club. During spirit week in third grade I dressed up as Claudia for "favorite book character day" (spirit weeks in elementary school were always so nerdy. I loved it!) and I obsessed over the books for years - for about 5 seconds in 6th grade a friend and I tried to start our own babysitting club - foiled only by pesky facts like not knowing a lot of families with little kids. However, after sixth grade I set the books down and I don't think I ever picked them up again (I was distracted by my Animorphs obsession) - so when I started reading the new prequel, I was surprised by how much of these books I remembered!

Also, because it was stuck in my head the entire time I was reading the book (and again now that I'm reviewing it), here's the theme song for the TV show. Listen to it while you read the rest of the post and join me in my nostalgia/misery:



Told from alternating points of view like the old Super Specials were, The Summer Before shows the lives of Kristy, Mary-Anne, Claudia and Stacey the summer before Kristy has her big idea to form the Baby-Sitters Club. It's the summer before seventh grade and changes are afoot for everyone. Kristy's mom has started dating again, while Kristy is hoping desperately that her father will remember her 12th birthday. Mary-Anne is feeling stifled by her father's strict rules and wants to be trusted enough to go out babysitting on her own. Claudia has her first crush and feels she's growing up way faster than either Mary-Anne or Kristy and wonders whether they should still be friends. And poor Stacey is alone in New York City, still learning how to deal with her relatively recent diabetes diagnosis and how all of her friends seem to have turned against her. She can't wait until the end of the summer when she and her parents are moving to Connecticut.

One thing that did set this novel apart from the other BSC books is a distinct lack of description - the old books always dedicated the second chapter to giving an extensive rundown of the girls and their distinct late 80s/early 90s fashion sense (which continues to be celebrated today at What Claudia Wore). There's a severe lack of clothing descriptions here - I don't think Stacey's city-chic fashion sense was mentioned even once! The bulk of the clothing descriptions went to Claudia, naturally, but even hers seemed a little toned down. I miss my crazy Claudia :-(

Among the nostalgia, one thing I really, really enjoyed about this book, and in retrospect all of the BSC books, is how much these girls genuinely like each other. You can see why they're friends because it's actually demonstrated in the text - we aren't just told that they're friends and then they go off on their own separate adventures. I was a little concerned with Claudia's boy-interest in this book - I don't remember her being the type that would fall for a boy and ditch her friends in the process. Am I just forgetting something from the original series?

Is this a ground breaking novel? Nope. Is it a sweet coming of age story? Definitely. The writing style doesn't seem to have changed in 20+ years, which is great for the nostalgia factor for grownups returning to the series, though I don't know if this is the greatest place for prospective BSC fans to start.

Nonfiction Monday Review: Hungry by Crystal Renn

Found via: Amelia Bloomer Project nomination

I'm not a big follower of fashion, but Crystal Renn's name pops up periodically in any feminist discussion of beauty and body image in popular culture, as she's one of the most successful "plus size" models working today (never mind the irony that she's in the size 10-12 range - the average size for American women today). I hadn't realized she had written a memoir, but when I saw it nominated for the Amelia Bloomer Project, I knew I had to give it a read.

Renn's memoir looks briefly at her pre-modeling life, living happily with her mother and grandmother who always encouraged her to be happy more than anything else. Despite the hints at some complicated family issues, it's clear that Renn had a happy childhood.

Everything changed for her at the age of 14 when a scouting model looked at her and said she could be a star - if she lost weight. Renn says she's always been a bit compulsive and something of a perfectionist, and the scout's statement was the impetus for her perfectionist tendencies to be directed towards her body. The bulk of the memoir focuses on Renn's struggle with anorexia as she works in modeling in New York City - trying to live the dream, but never finding much success, even as her agents tell her to lose more and more weight. When she hits rock bottom, she finds the strength to get out, get healthy, and re-emerge on the scene, healthier and more talented than ever.

I've been questioning some of the Amelia Bloomer project's nonfiction nominations recently - not because they were poor quality titles, but because they really didn't seem to fall into the "birth to 18" age range the list is built for. Renn, however, is barely out of her teens herself - she's 24 now - so much of the book focuses squarely on her teen years and is written in a way that is totally accessible to teens and adults.

Renn's story is absolutely terrifying. The dominant narrative of anorexia is about girls delusional enough to think they're fat even as they're wasting away. Renn knew she had anorexia and avoided doctors even when she developed other illnesses or injuries because she knew a doctor would take one look at her and declare her anorexic. So why did she keep starving herself? It was the only way she knew how to stay working.

This is more than just Renn's personal story, however. She makes pointed criticisms of the industry and a lot of the "reforms" that have been "suggested" in order to improve the health of the women working the runways of the most important fashion shows around the world. She also gives great insights into the world of fashion that should disabuse anyone of the notion that it's full-time glamorous.

Renn's story is a powerful, positive message. When she switches to plus-size work, Renn is told that there will be plenty of work in advertising, but very little high fashion work. Renn sets out to prove them wrong, and is obviously succeeding considering how often she's been on the covers of magazines around the world. She was in the news again late last month, coming forward with allegations that she'd been photoshopped to look dangerously thin. She acknowledges in the book even that photoshopping is a way of life in the industry - getting rid of zits and stray hairs are great since fashion photography isn't about creating a documentary - but it's clear she has a strong personal line and woe to the photographer that dares to cross it.

This will definitely be of interest to anyone who's curious about the pressures of the entertainment industry - for a lot of what goes on in modeling goes on for other performers as well. It's an inspiring story of overcoming a deadly illness and not letting anything hold you back.


This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Three Turtles and their Pet Librarian. Be sure to stop by and see the other nonfiction posts this week!

Review: Efrain's Secret by Sofia Quintero

Found via: Publisher's Weekly 3/15

I've been dying to post about this one for almost a week now. I discussed some of it with Ari of Reading in Color on Twitter after she finished, but I wanted to get my Nerds Heart YA decision up first so I could make some comparisons between The World is Mine and this, which I coincidentally read shortly after.

Efrain has one goal in life: to be accepted into an Ivy League school. He knows it's an uphill battle: he has no college fund; he's Latino; and even though he's poised to be Valedictorian at his Bronx high school, does class rank really matter when your school doesn't even offer calculus? But the final nail in the coffin appears to come in the form of his SAT score - 1650, far below the average score for Harvard's incoming Freshmen. With a mother that works around the clock just to keep a roof over his and his little sister's heads and a deadbeat dad who moved in down the street with his mistress, Efrain feels like he's at a dead end. Until his old friend Nestor, a high school drop out and current drug peddler, offers to hook Efrain up with a job like his. It's hard work, long hours, and fraught with danger from the cops and rival dealers, but the cash is tax free and it's all for the noble goal of escaping epidemic poverty, so it's okay, right?

Complicating Efrain's life even more are his relationships with his best friend Chingy and potential girlfriend Candace, a survivor of Hurricane Katrina with an overprotective mother. Efrain knows neither would approve of where he's getting his cash, and chooses to keep both in the dark, hoping to keep his secret until he has enough cash to pay for an SAT prep course, re-take the test, and start paying for college with the help of loans. But once he starts peddling drugs, working up from marijuana to the harder stuff, will it really be that easy to get out?

Oh Efrain, Efrain, Efrain. So many times I just wanted to grab him by the shoulders and tell him that no matter how daunting life seemed, selling drugs just wasn't the way to solve his problems. Of course, then there wouldn't be much of a story, would there? Quintero keeps this from falling into a re-hash of an after-school special with dynamic dialog and engaging characters. Nestor, who paves the way for Efrain to join him in the drug peddling business, is an absolutely terrific character. He's neither a stereotypical street kid nor a thug with a heart of gold - rather he's somewhere realistically in between. He alternates between being goofy and serious, a buddy to Efrain and a no-nonsense dealer. I almost want a book about Nestor's story!

The comparison I wanted to make between this and The World is Mine all comes down to the dialog. There are a lot of differences between these two books, but one major thing they have in common is the use of lots of slang. However, The World is Mine called a lot of attention to the slang by interpreting it for the audience, which drew me out of the story constantly and seemed to make it clear the book wasn't actually intended for anyone who might really speak that way. Efrain's Secret, in contrast, hardly translates anything at all. There are even short bursts of dialog in Spanish that go untranslated for an English-speaking audience. Since I speak about three words of Spanish, I had to rely on the context and character reactions to even have a clue what was going on, but it really added another layer of authenticity to the story. It reminded me of one of the things I loved best about the early seasons of Lost, when parts of Jin and Sun's conversations in Korean would go un-sub-titled. It was a great storytelling device then, and it works just as well in Efrain's Secret.

Efrain's Secret is a solid story that jumps up a notch on the basis of great characters and an engaging and immersive writing style.

Review: Borrowed Names by Jeannine Atkins

Found via: Read Roger

More poetry! But I'm not too bothered I couldn't fit this in to National Poetry Month, as this collection is all about mothers and daughters. Well, three specific pairs of mothers & daughters: Laura Ingalls Wilder and daughter Rose Wilder Lane, Madame C.J. Walker and daughter A'Lelia Walker and Marie Curie and daughter Irene Joiliot-Curie. A perfect post-mother's-day book!

1867 was apparently a banner year, as that is the year the three mothers highlighted in this collection were born. The book is divided into three sections, each focusing on one mother/daughter pair, chronicling the daughter's life as she grows up, watching her mother, learning from her mistakes, and gaining inspiration for her own life. For the daughters are no slouches either: Rose Wilder Lane was a journalist and a biographer before helping her mother turn stories of her childhood into the Little House series; A'Lelia Walker used the fortune she earned as part of her mother's company to support the Harlem Renaissance; and Irene Joliot-Curie joined her mother as a WWI X-Ray technician, saving countless lives, before earning her own Nobel Prize, following in her mother's footsteps by studying radioactivity.

The poetry is well done, as is the biographical content. While I'm no expert on any of these women, Atkins doesn't pull any punches and shows both the ups and downs in these women's lives, including a troubled marriage for Rose and the sexism of the Nobel committee. This bit stuck out for me:

She remembers them taking a train to Sweden
where a woman might earn the Nobel Prize
but would be kept from speaking on the stage

Borrowed Names page 149
It's subtle but spot on, in the way that only poetry can be.

This is the sort of book I would have loved to have available for Ada Lovelace Day. Maybe someone else will pick it up for review next year. While I don't think this would be a replacement for a full biography on any of these women, it's certainly an interesting supplement, and really breathes life into these families in a way a standard biography never can.


Nonfiction Monday is hosted this week by Picture Book of the Day. Check out other great non-fiction posts going up today!

Review: Scarlett Fever by Maureen Johnson

Yay, another Scarlett book! I loved Suite Scarlett, so I was checking my library every day after Scarlett Fever was published to make sure I'd get this one ASAP!

Scarlett Fever picks up shortly after Suite Scarlett left off - Hamlet has closed and the set is being struck. Lola is still at her job at the spa. Spencer has signed with newly minted agent (and former Hopewell Hotel guest) Amy Amberson, and Scarlett is her assistant. Melanie is at her Powerkids summer camp, so Scarlett has a few blessed days without her antagonism to wallow in her own self-pity.

Why is Scarlett wallowing? She's still hung up over Eric, the super cute Southern boy who teamed up with Spencer in Hamlet and was a total jerk to Scarlett by seeing her when he already had a girlfriend back home.

Yeah, I wasn't an Eric fan.

School is about to start, and happens to bring big changes to the Martin family. Perhaps the biggest is Spencer's surprise role in Crime and Punishment (an homage to Law and Order) which makes him an overnight celebrity - the kind that attracts semi-creepy people to wander into the hotel and up into the family's living quarters looking for him. Chip, Lola's former boyfriend, is back in the picture with Lola, much to Spencer and Scarlett's disappointment. Oh, and Melanie? Melanie is back from camp and being nice. It totally freaks Scarlett out.

And Scarlett has enough on her plate. Mrs. Amberson is as demanding as ever - she wants to sign a promising young Broadway performer to the agency. Chelsea is 15 and has a beautiful voice, but is stuck in one of the worst Broadway performances in memory. Not to mention she is saddled with a crazy stage mother and a bitter older brother who just so happens to sit next to Scarlett in biology class. Mrs. Amberson has asked Scarlett to "keep an eye" on him on top of her assistant duties, which now include taking a terrified little dog out for daily walks. And to top everything off - Eric is trying to hang around again, ostensibly to get Scarlett's advice on acting, but how is she supposed to get over him if he won't just leave her alone?

I love the Martins. They are a crazy, mixed up, and totally loving family. Even Melanie this time around! (Even though I agree her being nice is really kinda creepy). I also love Johnson's descriptions of New York City. I've been here a year and a half now so I'm really beginning to get the geography. I also cackled with glee when Scarlett took Chelsea to my favorite food place in Manhattan, the Shake Shack.

Johnson also does a great job with the class issues the Martins face, both subtle and overt. The subtle bits are with Scarlett and her relationship with money and her thoughts about her friends who clearly have more money than her (friends who spent the summer in Europe rather than staging plays in their dining rooms). On the one hand it seems like her family should be fabulously wealthy since they own a hotel and all, but since the hotel gets next to no guests and the massive medical bills that piled up during Melanie's cancer, money is tight in the household. More overt bits are with Lola and Chip and his family. Chip comes from money and some of the Martins, Scarlett and Spencer in particular, feel he's a bit ostentatious with it. There are serious questions of why Lola is back with him, so once more I really appreciated a look at life for a family that is neither incredibly rich nor nearly destitute. The Martins get by, but it's no cakewalk.

Two gripes on this book: first of all, it just ends. It's really abrupt and I closed the book thinking "that's it?" The last scene isn't bad (it's actually quite hilarious), but it doesn't feel like a complete ending. There's definitely more Scarlett books to look ahead to, I guess.

Second of all, I feel totally bleh about the cover


It's a golden key on a purple wallpaper background. It feels dull. It's really uninspiring to me.

Suite Scarlett in paperback has been redesigned to have a coordinating cover. I'm not saying the original cover was perfect, but it had a bit more character than the new covers:


I have some nitpicks on this cover - Scarlett's hair is way too perfect for example - but that's so minor and so nitpicky that it doesn't matter. At least it has more character than the new ones.

Cover and ending aside, this is another great Maureen Johnson book. She has her own brand of wit and humor and uses it with ease. Scarlett Fever works excellently as a sequel (right up until that ending), and I can't wait to read the next Scarlett story.

Review: Brooklyn Nine by Alan Gratz

Found via: Bill at Literate Lives

I came across Literate Lives via the Comment Challenge while bloggers Bill and Karen were running a series of Newbery predictions. I know next to nothing about the Newbery award, since most of my reading is now focused on Printz-level books, but I really wish Brooklyn Nine had been at least an honor, 'cause this was an awesome book.

Brooklyn Nine is a series of nine short stories following a family through nine generations of baseball. While mostly set in Brooklyn, there are two stories that step outside of New York - one into Virginia during the Civil War, and another back to my home state of Michigan during WWII with a female baseball player. How could I not love a book that combines baseball, women's baseball in WWII, AND my two home states?

What I found most fascinating was the mix of baseball history and American history that was woven into many of the stories. For example, I had no idea that pre-Civil War, it was accepted that you could get someone out by catching the ball after it bounced. It takes a few generations for the game to evolve into the one we recognize today. Additionally, major and minor historical events are integrated - stories take place during the Civil War and WWII, and in 1981, boys playing little league are teasing each other for seeing Empire Strikes Back and Indiana Jones a dozen times each, and debating who Yoda meant when he said one other person also had the force (no one guesses its Leia!). In between, characters face racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, and regular run of the mill bullies.

My favorite stories were Frankie Schneider in 1926, a numbers genius who has given up on the idea of going to college because she's a girl and is a fan of the dismal Brooklyn Robins, Kat Flint in 1945, the newest member of the Grand Rapids (Michigan!) Chicks, and Michael Flint in 1981, who's in the process of pitching a perfect game.

Michael's story is actually one of the most beautifully written stories I've read, possibly ever. Gratz does an amazing job amping up the tension as we follow Michael through his first ever perfect game. Gratz says in the notes that he based Michael's ninth inning on the ninth inning of Sandy Koufax's 1965 perfect game as called by Vin Scully. You can read the transcript of the inning here, or listen to it in your browser here. I definitely think Gratz nailed it.

In the first story, Gratz has also written one of my favorite descriptions of New York City - and coincidentally, Felix Schneider is hanging around the neighborhood I work in when he says:

Felix found it easy to lose himself in Broadway's foot traffic, to be swept up by the rush and hurry of Manhattan, to hear the clatter of iron horseshoes on cobblestones and the catcalls and insults of the city's famously rude cabbies like a lullaby. On Broadway Felix was not a poor German Jew from Bremen walking the streets of a strange metropolis. Here, he was a New Yorker.

This isn't just a book for baseball fans - while baseball is the theme of these stories, for most of the stories the sport is window dressing. This is a collection to be read by fans of historical fiction, short stories, and just all around beautiful writing as well. Another book that is going on my early "Best of 2010" list.

Review: Liar by Justine Larbalestier

Ever since the cover controversy that surrounded this book earlier this year, I've been dying to get my hands on this book.

And then, once I'd had my hands on it, I was dying for a friend to get it so we could discuss it! This is a book that begs for a group to read it and then meet for coffee to discuss it.

Micah is a liar. She tells us that on page one. But she also swears she will tell us the truth. The whole truth. The really real truth. But lying is a hard habit to break. So as Micah tells us her story, of her secret romance, her eccentric extended family, and a mysterious family illness, we are forced to read between the lines and try to figure out just what is true about Micah's story - if anything is at all.

I really can't say more than that because it is SO IMPORTANT that you read this book without spoilers. Justine has pulled together one bizarre book, with so many twists and turns that even after reading it twice and talking via AIM with a friend (who read it in just two sittings at the book store!) I still have no idea what "really" happened.

It's the holidays, so if you're picking up this book for yourself, pick up a second copy to give to a friend as a gift. You'll both be thankful when you finish that you have someone to talk to!

And if you don't have a discussion partner handy, you can always check out the spoiler post Justine set up on her blog. Seriously, though, it's full of spoilers, so if you haven't read the book yet, avoid that post at all costs! Are you reading the non-spoilery parts of Justine's blog yet? She probably has one of my favorite author-blogs on the 'net. She and her husband, Scott Westerfeld, alternated days for giving writing tips during NaNoWriMo, and Justine consistently has some of the smartest blog posts on topics like race and gender in YA lit that I've seen on the web. I highly recommend it.

Double Review: Shine, Coconut Moon by Neesha Meminger and Love is the Higher Law by David Levithan

Found via: BBYA 2010 nominations

Oh man, it's been a crazy week out here. The weekend before Thanksgiving I was in Chicago with my mom, and then I spent Thanksgiving weekend with my in-laws in Florida, meaning there was lots of traveling, and LOTS of reading, but little time to blog! Thankfully, my reading list made my blogging a little easier for me by happening to have thematically similar books, like these two stories of how 9/11 affected high school students.

In Shine, Coconut Moon, Sam is an Indian-American teenager living in a relatively diverse community in New Jersey. For most of her life, she's put the emphasis on the "American" in her heritage, as her mother has kept her away from her very traditional Sikh grandparents. Instead, Sam spends most of her time with her best friend, Molly, and wondering when she'll lose her virginity to her boyfriend, Mike.

The weekend after 9/11, Sam is surprised to find a man in a turban at her front door. He says he's her uncle Sandeep, her mother's brother, and after his tumultuous divorce he wants to be part of Sam's and her mother's lives again. Sam is eager to get to know her uncle, and pressures him to teach her everything about her Sikh heritage, despite her mother's reservations and outright objections to Sam having anything to do with Sikh culture. As she grows more aware of her cultural heritage, she realizes just how different she is in some ways from her friends and community - but also learns to recognize what is truly important in life.

Love is the Higher Law takes place in New York City in the immediate after math of 9/11. The narrative jumps between three characters - Claire and Peter, who attend high school together, and Jaspar, the college guy Peter had scheduled a date with for the evening of 9/11. Alternating chapters explore the three characters and what it's like for them to live in post-9/11 New York City: Jaspar was sleeping late and actually missed the early TV coverage - and his parents were temporarily stranded in South Korea, where they'd been visiting Jaspar's grandmother; Claire spent 9/11 in her brother's elementary school, keeping him and his classmates calm while waiting for their mother to find them; Peter was skipping school to buy a new CD when an employee tells him the news. In the days, weeks and months after, each of them tries to understand how they fit into this new world they've been thrust in to.

I realized with a start about half way through Love is the Higher Law that for the first time in several years, I was reading a book about my peers. As an adult reading YA lit, I'm used to reading about characters who are about 10 years younger than I am, and in both of these books the protagonists are in the 17-19 years old age range - but back on September 11th, 2001, I was just a couple of months shy of my 17th birthday myself. I kind of found myself wondering what the characters were doing "now," in their mid-twenties, almost a decade later. It also made me wonder how today's crop of teenagers react to these books, since they were in elementary school in 2001.

Shine, Coconut Moon also had moments of familiarity for me - I remember reading this article in my hometown paper shortly after 9/11, about a Sikh family posting signs explaining their religion in the windows of their store, in order to prevent any attacks against them.

Shine, Coconut Moon and Love is the Higher Law are both excellent titles showing the wide variety of ways teenagers reacted after 9/11.

Review: Riot by Walter Dean Myers

Found via: A Chair, a Fireplace & a Tea Cozy

No Non-fiction Monday this week for me :-( All of my non-fiction reading this week has been older and not-necessarily-YA Civil War stuff.

So instead I'll give you some Civil War historical fiction!

Riot looks at the New York City draft riots of 1863, when the draft was first instituted in the United States, and included the provision that rather than being drafted a man could give the government $300 in order to pay for a replacement. Considering that an average monthly salary back in the day would hover around $10 (and could be significantly less if you were of a disliked class, such as a free Black man or an Irish immigrant), only the rich would be able to afford avoiding the draft. This just heightened existing class and racial tensions, since many of those who would now be forced to fight viewed it as a rich man's war fought by poor men on behalf of black men.

At the center of this particular story is Claire, the daughter of a white Irish mother and an African-American father, who run a nice little hotel with hopes of owning it someday. Claire has fair enough skin that she easily passes for white, though it's generally known in the neighborhood that she's biracial. When the first mutterings of the draft riots begin, a few local hooligans come by Claire's family's hotels, looking for support, but Claire's family is determined to stay out of the fray, insulting the hooligans.

As the city explodes into violence, Claire's parents do everything they can to keep her safe, but Claire is determined to figure out for herself where she fits into this riot: she is Irish, but isn't she also Black? Where should her loyalties lie? And why did this have to devolve into violence in the first place?

I have to admit, I'm not a fan of the screenplay narrative method. I thought it worked for Monster but just fell short here. I felt like we were too removed from everything, from Claire's feelings about her identity to the brief glimpses of the violence. Nothing really connected, and the screenplay format led to some awkward dialogue to explain the background and historical setting that would have been covered in narration in a traditional book. Due to this distance, I felt like this would probably work best for someone who has a bit of working knowledge of the draft riots, and wants an interesting story about the people at the time.

Review: Jumped by Rita Williams-Garcia

Found via: BBYA 2010 nominations

This is a slim little book that has one relentless focus: follow three girls over the course of one school day after one girl inadvertently insults another. Leticia overhears Dominique threaten to beat up Trina after school, after Trina accidentally bumps her in the hallway before school. That's the entire set up, and what follows in an increasingly tense school day, as Dominique obsesses over a long list of slights that have led her to the point where beating up another girl seems like a reasonable response, Trina is oblivious and goes through the day as her (almost annoyingly) bubbly self, and Leticia wavers endlessly over whether she should warn Trina or just mind her own business.

All three girls are written realistically with distinct voices - the chapters alternate between their first person accounts and I never had a moment where I needed to flip to the beginning of the chapter to figure out who was narrating now. The review from Booklist on Amazon accuses Trina of being simplified with her "relentless snobbery," but I had a totally different read on her: yes, she's a bit stuck up and full of herself, but how often do we get to read about a young woman who has complete confidence in herself? Trina never wonders if people are judging her for her weight, her skin, her hair - she knows she's fabulous and thinks everyone else agrees with her assessment! We know Dominique clearly disagrees, and it's pretty clear Leticia thinks she's stuck up as well and doesn't think anyone else likes her, either, but since we have three first person narrators it's impossible to get an objective stance on where Trina really stands in the eyes of the student body. I thought it was a great addition to her character.

Review: Secret Subway by Martin W. Sandler

(Photo by me - New York loves its subway so much, it gets its name in lights in Times Square!)

Hope everyone had a good Labor Day last week - I hadn't intended to, but I ended up taking the week off from blogging (obviously) since my parents came into town to visit. So I spent most of last week being a tourist with them - it was the only way I could justify taking the above photo, since usually I'm trying my hardest to blend in with the natives and whipping out your camera to take a picture in Times Square isn't Native New York behavior.

But, as I did with Wondrous Strange, I wanted to make this a bit of an illustrated post since today's book, Secret Subway, is all about the first subway built in New York City, well before the system that I ride every day was even imagined.

Sandler has researched all sorts of aspects of life in New York in the mid-to-late 1800s to give an in depth look at what life in the city that never sleeps was like, from crowded/dangerous/dirty streets to the corrupt politicians that had their fingers in all parts of city life. This gives us a great view of the environment Alfred Beach was working in to create his original idea for the subway, a luxurious ride underneath the hubbub of the surface streets.

If only that dream had continued to today!


(From Flickr user andy in nyc - the dingy and usually crowded station at Union Square, where I go to buy veggies at the Greenmarket every week. Note the lack of comfy couches and pianos, and how the platform is right next to the train tracks, as opposed to Beach's original plan for the waiting area to be separate from the boarding platform)

Though that's not to say all of our platforms are miserable

(From Flickr user wallyg The awesome art at the Museum of Natural History's stop. You can walk right from the subway platform into the museum!)

I was utterly enthralled by this book - it's such a fantastic story, even for those who aren't from the city. Beach's story is one that captures the imagination from the moment one first hears of it: how did a person build a subway in secret in one of the biggest cities in the world?

Apparently, Beach's subway is still beneath the streets - it was discovered when the current subway system was being expanded. I would love it if the MTA could get some of it out and put it on display in our transit museum. Then again, since we just had the ceiling collapse in a station built in 1903, I wonder if it really has survived?

Thoughts on the current state of NYC transit aside, Secret Subway is a fascinating look at forgotten New York history, a must read for history fans (for the look at transportation and politics in 19th century New York), transit buffs, and all of those who <3 NY.

Review: Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston

I've lived in New York City for just under a year now and there are still huge swathes of the city I've yet to explore. So on the nice weekends this summer (of which there have been disappointingly few) I'm trying to go out and see new places - especially if I can connect them to a book I'm reading!

I picked up Wondrous Strange because the annotation on the BBYA nominations page mentions A Midsummer Night's Dream. Now, despite being a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge drama geek, I've never been a big fan of Shakespeare. In college I took a 2 week study abroad course on the bard because I had to take a Shakespeare class and 2 weeks in London sounded a hell of a lot better than a semester in a stuffy classroom. However, Midsummer was my first introduction to Shakespeare, way back in 5th grade when I got to be a fairy in the high school's production (being the daughter of their costumer definitely had its perks!). Then, right when the play was about to open, the cartoon Gargoyles started a Midsummer-themed arc featuring Oberon, Titania and Puck prominently.

So even though there is nothing else about Wondrous Strange that would normally appeal to me, I knew I had to pick it up. And as long as I was reading something Shakespearean-esque, why not check out the Shakespeare Garden in Central Park?


(Inscription reads: This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,/May prove a beauteous flow'r when next we meet)

From what I've read the garden is best viewed in springtime when all of the flowers are in bloom. I had to settle for greenery. Lots and lots of greenery.

I did, however, find a plaque and some plants from Midsummer. Here's my attempt at fitting the book and the plaque into the same photo:


"I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows/where oxlips and the nodding violet grows/Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine/With sweet musk-roses and with Eglantine" A Midsummer Night's Dream, ii, 1

Mission accomplished, I found a nice grassy shaded area, broke out a picnic lunch, and settled in to read Wondrous Strange, and was very proud of myself that the book all but opens in the very part of Central Park I was sitting in!

Kelley, at 17, has moved to New York City to pursue her dream of acting, and has caught her lucky break when the tempermental star of A Midsummer Night's Dream storms off the stage, forcing stagehand and understudy Kelley to step into the role of the fairy queen Titania. It's Autumn in New York, just days before Halloween - an eerie time in the city. Kelley, already stressed from being pushed suddenly into the spotlight, is further unnerved when she attracts the attention of a mysterious good looking stranger in the park. And then she finds a horse in the reservoir that proceeds to follow her home and take up residence in her apartment's tiny bathtub.

Kelley has unwittingly been wandering through Central Park when the barrier between the human and fairy worlds is at its weakest. The mysterious stranger is Sonny Flannery, one of Auberon's guards of the gate. Sonny is instantly attracted to Kelley, not only for her spunk and good looks - but rather there's an almost otherworldly element to her that Sonny can't get out of his mind - even when he's supposed to be guarding the human world from Queen Mab's minions.

It feels to me like if you've read one girl-meets-fairies story you've probably read them all - it's not a genre that holds my attention particularly well, but the slight Shakespearean element adds a little bit of depth to the story. Only a little bit, because it's not like the story itself mimics Midsummer, rather characters like Auberon (Oberon) and Puck are inserted where, really, any generic fairy king/trickster could have been.

The inclusion of some Midsummer characters did get me thinking, though - Oberon shows up in lots of places in literature - but I can't think of anything outside of the Gargoyles cartoon that features Titania (who personally I've always found more awesome - the only person with the guts to stand up to Oberon. And he could only get her back using magic!). Anyone know of a book where Titania gets to be the star?