Tag: YA

Spellbinder


The two covers of Spellbinder by Helen Stringer

This is a book I picked up because of the cover. See the first one? It’s quite nice. When I got the ebook version for easier reading, it had a new cover, the second one. Note how generic it is. Unfortunately, the second cover was the accurate one.

There was a somewhat interesting story hiding in Spellbinder by Helen Stringer, but it was overshadowed by the author’s inability to dole out information properly (the main method seemed to be that instead of saying something useful/expositiony, the people talking would get incredibly irritated, I am pretty sure the word ‘irritated’ appears in this book around five hundred times, and refuse to speak more) and near the end it all got a little frayed. There was a set up for a sequel but I couldn’t be bothered.

I will say, this would have made a pretty good video game.

Okay, the plot is: Belladonna Johnson’s parents died in a car crash, but she still lives happily with their ghosts. One day all the ghosts in the world disappear and it’s up to Belladonna to find out what happened.

I liked the premise, not so much the final execution. I think of the characterizations had been better (everyone seemed generally angry all the time) I would have enjoyed this book a lot more. I don’t regret my time reading it, but I can see how it could have been much better.

Harriet the Spy


Harriet performs her onion dance

Tonight I read Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh (had to look that up, I was looking at the tiiiny cover on my ipod and thought her last name was Pittsburgh) which was the source of my childhood fixation on tomato sandwiches. I’m also realizing I must have read the sequels, because there was a scene I clearly remembered involving goat cheese that did not, in fact, happen in this book.

Harriet wants to be a spy, so she keeps a dossier on everyone. Everyone. Unfortunately, Harriet doesn’t have very nice things to say to people and the inevitable happens.

When I read this the first time, I was eleven which is Harriet’s age, so her behaviour seemed perfectly natural. Now that I’m an adult with an eleven year old stepbrother, I see how accurate Harriet’s behaviour was. Running around, screaming when talking for no reason, not understanding how feelings work outside her. Don’t let that imply I don’t think my step-brother is totally awesome, but now I see how typical eleven year old Harriet’s attitude was.

A sort of thorny read emotionally, the part that really got me wasn’t even overtly sad, but it was just Harriet dealing with the fallout when things went wrong and her parents trying to help. There was just something about watching a kid suffer, even if the kid wasn’t fully aware they were suffering.

Great book, I can see why I loved it so much as a kid, even if I didn’t take its lesson to heart and had a brief fling with wanting to be a spy. Thank god for short attention spans.

Truckers

To clear the bad taste out of my brain, for book #50 I chose one I knew I’d like: Truckers by Terry Pratchett.

It’s a problem solving book. The Nomes have a problem: their home sucks. So they get on a lorry and see where they end up next, which turns out to be a place full of more nomes. These nomes live in a giant department store and don’t believe in the outside and it’s rather idyllic.

Except it’s going to be demolished.

There’s also a small box from space telling them what to do, and the joy of this book is the solutions the nomes come up to for their problems, in-between their arguing (nomes love to argue).

Masklin, the main character, suffers a bit from the sort of ‘good, but just kinda there’ lead problem that Pratchett’s books sometimes have, but I liked him a lot anyway. But my favourite part of the book was that unlike A Spell for Chameleon, women were suddenly people again.

And just for that, this book makes me so happy. I blew right through it, I was enjoying myself so much. It’s part of a series, the Bromeliad Trilogy, and the next book is Diggers, followed by Wingers.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly is my latest read book and I quite liked it. It’s about an eleven year old girl (twelve by the end) in 1899 Texas who wants to become a naturalist, aided and encouraged by her cantankerous grandfather she barely knew before he comforts her one summer day after her failure to get Darwin’s controversial new book from the library. It starts with her trying to understand where these new types of grasshoppers had appeared, big fat yellow ones, different from the small green ones she was used to.

She’s the only girl in a family of even kids and right in the middle, and three of her brothers are sweet on her best friend. In-between trying to master science, she has to deal with her mother trying to make her into the girl her mother didn’t get a chance to be thanks to the Civil War.

Speaking of that, the book dances around the fact that her family fought on the south’s side. They have a black cook, Viola, who is treated with a lot of respect in the book but the specter was held over the book. The uneasiness that left in me was the only sour point of the novel, however. Otherwise it is a perfectly sweet book, with Calpurnia coming off as a very realistic young girl.

Also, apparently it’s got my taste nailed because:

Are all books I strongly recommend, especially Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin which is still one of the best books I have ever read.

Summer book count: Working on #49.

When You Reach Me and The Miraculous Journey Of Edward Tulane

Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean. It’s like how turning on a light makes you realize how dark the room had gotten. And the way you usually act, the things you would have normally done, are like these ghosts that everyone can see but pretends not to. It was like that.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Decided to read something by a new author, and went with a kid’s sci-fi book. It’s not terribly sci-fi except for one big part, and takes place in 1978 New York. It follows a young girl named Miranda who has three problems: Her best friend Sal has decided to stop being friends, there’s strange laughing homeless man by her apartment, and she’s getting notes from the future.

It’s a clever book, but what I really liked about it was all the relationships that go on throughout it. Her world really opens up in the few months in the story.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo was a book I had to take a near-month break from. It was the one that made me start crying on a plane, and I’ve been waiting for a nice private moment to see how Edward the porcelain toy rabbit’s journey ends. I cried more. I think Kate DiCamillo has it out for me.

It’s a beautiful book, with great imagery, sweet characters, and a fair bit of injustice but it’s about love. And a toy rabbit that didn’t love or care about anyone at the start. Then shit goes down.

This is the second book by DiCamillo I’ve read and they were both excellent. Looking forward to reading the other books by her I’ve bought.

Johnny and the Bomb


Johnny and the Bomb by Terry Pratchett

The last of the Johnny Maxwell trilogy! Johnny and the Bomb takes Johnny from helping videogame aliens (Only You Can Save Mankind), helping out ghosts (Johnny and the Dead) to straight up time travel. It all starts because Johnny was determined to help the local homeless woman after finding her in a bad case in an alley (first chapter spoiler: She had set off an unexploded bomb back in the ’40s).

It was definitely the best one of the series, which makes the fact it ends there kind of worse. The characters were getting all nice and developed and Johnny was finally developing a personality (but one scene especially proves it would have been better with him being a girl instead of a white guy looking on.)

There’s an emotionally painful scene in the book, involving Yo-less (who is black) and the racism back then, except it’s not the people who did it that hurt him so much as one of his friend’s reaction to it and it was rather on the nose.

Anyway, it was fun YA, but I still haven’t recovered enough to read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane yet.

I read three Diana Wynne Jones stories last night when the streets flooded and I was trapped at my dad’s, but I’ll talk about that later when I’ve composed my thoughts vis a vis ‘how much is Earwig and the Witch to be blamed on the fact it’s a posthumous book?’

Johnny and the Dead


Johnny and the Dead by Terry Pratchett

Second book in the Johnny Maxwell trilogy changes nothing about my requests for some changes to the protagonist, but it’s significantly smoother than the first, Only You Can Save Mankind. In this one Johnny goes from leading an alien race to safety to helping out the local dead in the town graveyard.

It has some good philosophical bits, a lack of Kirsty (that’s not a good thing), and the usual cute interactions between Johnny and his friends, who are still twelve. It isn’t until the next book coming up, Johnny and the Bomb, where they finally get to upgrade to thirteen and get seriously involved in the adventures besides thinking Johnny’s a bit strange.

In Johnny and the Dead, Johnny starts seeing dead people, and then the dead people start realizing they can do a lot more than lay around waiting for judgement day. Wackiness ensues.

I’m actually halfway into the third and final book of the trilogy, which I thought I’d be done by now but grandparents came over and one must entertain ones grandparents or they start biting.

Only You Can Save Mankind


From ‘Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett, first in the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy

I’ve been reading a lot lately and forgetting to, well, mention it. A lot of it’s been comics (I heartily recommend Castle Waiting by Linda Medley, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong by Prudence Shen and Faith Erin Hicks, and of course I’m super excited they’re publishing the Ruby and Sapphire arc of Pokemon FINALLY. There is something satisfying I can’t even explain about seeing the games in art the way they were in my head. Also, the Ace Attorney comics are surprisingly pleasing! This has been a long sidetrack.) which aren’t as easy to review, but the books have been pretty good for the most part.

Read some Christie, Poirot’s Early Cases as well as And Then There Were None, both of which I really enjoyed. The second creeped me out pretty good in parts. The basic plot is, people are summoned mysteriously to a house and then they start dying.

Right before the above quoted book, I was reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo which is about a porcelain toy rabbit who is loved very much by a little girl, but doesn’t care about her. One day he’s lost at sea and ends up passing through the ownership of people he comes to care for very much and anyway, I had to shut that book down in the middle while I was reading because it made me start crying on an airplane. Considering I was also suffering from pretty bad food poisoning, I felt I’d alarmed my seatmate enough for that ride.

Kate DiCamillo wrote Tale of Despereaux, which remains one of the best books I ever read, and this one isn’t disappointing. When I found her other books were available as ebooks, they got boosted way the hell up on my to-read list, but are now officially ‘do no read in front of other people’ books.

Right after shutting down the book to regain composure, I had to choose another book and fast to switch gears. I chose Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett, a YA book he wrote early on. His early stuff is kind of dire, but it was just what I needed. It’s full of interesting character descriptions and a fun videogame story with an alien race I like.

The only problem was the main character, Johnny Maxwell who was inoffensive but so generic that once he started interacting with the girl in the story I started desperately wishing he was Janie Maxwell because at least I wouldn’t feel like I was reading about a cookie cutter protagonist and it would have made parts of their interaction a lot less urgh to read.

I’m starting on the next book in the trilogy now, Johnny and the Dead which ominously starts off with Terry Pratchett explaining Pal battalions.