Summer means BOOKS!

Sunrise was at 5:11, sunset will be at 9:11.  Sunrise is early.  And the lightening of the sky? Earlier.  The birds, especially if the flight path is especially low?  Earliest.  I swear they (the birds and the planes) start at 2:30 am in and over our neighborhood.  I wonder if they get confused by the streetlights- Do the trees shake when the planes rumble over?  Who knows.  They are just awake and noisy.

Solstice is tomorrow.  I just checked the sunrise/sunset calendar and it shows that we have 4 extra seconds of daylight today, less than a second tomorrow, and 5 whole SECONDS LESS on Saturday!  Wow!  Not even a day to get used to the idea that winter is on its way.

So, with summer on the doorstep, here are three fun young adult books for those looking for getaway reads.

The Summer of No Regrets, by Katherine Grace Bond (Sourcebooks).  The perfect summer read for younger young adults. There's romance, mystery, and cougar cubs.  What could be better than that?  Brigitta, a secret celebrity blogger (although she's pretty snarky about them), is not having a good year.  She's been dumped, her dad's changed toward her, and she has to spend the summer helping her parents promote their spiritual retreat. When her handsome new neighbor, Luke, is attacked by a cougar, she saves his life and her summer suddenly takes a different turn.  Luke (a dead ringer for bad boy star Trent Yves) and the cougar cubs they find and then care for become her secret from everyone, especially her star-crazed best friend, Natalie.

Brigitta's relationship with Luke is a little rocky-she's not sure if everything he's told her isn't all a lie.  But she likes him, he's funny and caring, and she's tired of being the good and reliable Brigitta of the past.

Summer of No Regrets has plenty of issues to make it a meaty read with a healthy dose of romance and tension, knotty problems with friends and family. It's a good one for ages 12 and up. (Available now, $8.99.)

Perry's Killer Playlist, by Joe Schreiber (Houghton Mifflin).  This is the sequel to Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick and you really NEED to read the first one first.  Hysterically funny, perfect for summer reading.  ARCEC is all about crazy spies and assassinations and fast cars, music and bands and being yanked out of anything at all resembling your normal life.  PKP is what happens later!  Perry has gotten into college, he's on a European tour with his band, and no one's tried to kill him in months.  Unfortunately, Gobi is still in his life.  Showing up in a shower of bullets and screaming tires, the two of them are OFF in a flurry of international murder plots, love and torture. All of that makes for an exciting and funny book.  I love recommending these books to teens who really just want something fun to read, nothing too cerebral.  There is sexual content so ages 13 and older.  (Both books are available now.  $16.99 each.)

The Moon and More, by Sarah Dessen (Viking).  Well, it just isn't summer without a new book by Sarah Dessen and I get so very excited about every single one of them.  There was some discussion at the store about her books, 11 so far, and how alike they all are and could there really be anything new?  My response was YES!  I LOVE her characters, I love that the conflicts are real ones that most girls have to deal with (attempted rape, abuse, family dysfunction, money...).  Her main characters are smart, funny, intense, able.  They study, they aim high, they rely on themselves to get where they want to be.  They are the girls at 17 that WE were at 17:  Bookish teenagers who know the world is so much bigger than the ones we're in and that we are going to take it by storm, so go on and get out of the way.

Okay, so The Moon and More is standard SD fare:  Girl in small town, happy with her boyfriend, the summer before college, when big city boy with big dreams comes and recruits her (Emaline) to work on his documentary film about a reclusive local artist.  A look at how her future could unroll leads to questions about her comfortable feelings about the life she leads now.  Loved it.  This may be the summer I re-read all her books.  (Available now. Ages 12 and up.  $19.99.)

Okay, I hope your summer unfurls in a flurry of paper and words and the time to enjoy them all.  Come on by Eagle Harbor Books (you get to take the FERRY!) and see me!  It's a nice little vacation from the big city.


(No recompense received for reviews.)

Rift, by Andrea Cremer, and a New View!

Monday, July 2, 2012.  The sun rose at 5:17 and it will set at 9:10.

The day is cool, so far, and the air feels wet.  It's overcast, but D went off to work without an outercovering saying, "It's Summer."  Yes, it is.  It's been muggy, colder inside than out, and I am REALLY not complaining, not after hearing about the rest of the nation's woes.  A friend in D.C. lost her porch when a tree fell in her backyard during the tornado strength storms over the weekend.

After a month and some odd days, it will be 2 months on July 5, we are finally putting up my birthday present!  During one of the last wind storms we awoke to the back screen door in pieces, dangling from its hinges and screws.  The wind caught it and slammed it back and forth against the house until it was limp and splintery.

We bought a new screen door on May 5, picked it up a week or two later.  I went out, got it securely packed in the jeep and received a short tutorial on how to finish a door.  I've spent the last 2 weeks or so sanding, wiping, oiling and staining.  The door is gorgeous and feels as soft as buttah.  Sliding my hands over the varnish, it's like glass, so smooth and silky.  The door guy is coming today.

We'd do it ourselves but the last time we did doors, we got into the worst fights!  Go to your left, no, your OTHER left! Lift, not that high! No, higher! Oh, my god, it was worse than learning how to drive a stick shift together.  Never again; it is so much more worth having someone else do it for me.  I did it once.  I know I can do it again.  I don't need to do it again.  And if I have to do it again, I may well have to do it with someone other than the husband.  Too easy to yell at the husband.

I just finished reading Rift, by Andrea Cremer.  It's the prequel to the Nightshade series, that really fun series of books about packs of werewolves with a very strong female presence.  Andrea Cremer is an early modern history professor at Macalester College.  Filled with allusions to sexual politics and the rights of women to make decisions about themselves and their lives, they are eye-opening and  empowering reads for young adults.  Okay, I read them long before realizing the self-empowerment parts - I just thought they were really good and the main character was so COOL!  Talk about a butt-kicking hero!

Rift takes place in Britain, after the Knights Templar, during the middle ages.  Ember is the younger daughter of a wealthy lord.  She was promised to the Conatus when her mother was saved from death during Ember's birth.  She's 16, now, and the Conatus, a secret group battling evil and demons throughout the land, have come to claim their due and train her as a warrior. 

Ember finds herself adapting easily to this world of warriors except for dealing with her tutor, Barrow.  She's finding life with Barrow to be particularly unnerving as she's not quite sure what the feelings she has for him are or if she is allowed to even have them. She's a quick study, strong, able with her weapons, but unsure as to what he feels for her.

When one of the group goes rogue, tempted into the dark magics to save her convent from a greedy abbot, convincing her order that the only way to survive is to join up with the demons, Ember has to decide whether to follow her or to leave the order and hunt down the knights she's grown to love.

Filled with action and weaponry and romance, Rift is a worthy addition to the Nightshade books.  It tells the beginning of the tale of the Keepers and the Searchers, the two groups represented in the Nightshade series.

I would have loved a pronunciation key for the names.  I played with all the possibilities until I just gave up and hummed them in my head as I ran across them.  Fionn=Finn?  Cian=Sean?  Shawn?  Does it matter?  Only if doesn't bother you to stop and figure them out each time they come up.  Eira=?

I really enjoy Andrea's books because the girls aren't afraid to get dirty.  They are strong and able, secure in their abilities to fight and win, a little arrogant, and will wade in to defend those they feel are on the right side of the battle.  They are sexual beings and comfortable with it.  The women in her books are warriors and proud of it.

And there are horses! 

(Ages 14 and up.  Philomel. $18.99.  Available August, 2012.




(No recompense received for the review of this book.)

Three Middle Grade Books for Summer Reading

Sunrise was at 5:13, sunset will be at 9:11.  -26 seconds of daytime since Solstice.

Today, Monday, is wet, gray, cool.  All the colors, especially the chartreuses, are eye-poppingly bright.  That particular color just glows against wet fences and rock walls, the pines and firs and an especially pewter-colored sky. It's supposed to be kind of nice tomorrow.  By nice I mean warm, there may be even some sun!  It sure would be good to have a day made for walking around Seward Park.  The late evenings have been lovely, though.  The sky often starts to clear around 7 or so and by full dark there are stars and the moon.

Do you remember Ray Bradbury's story, All Summer in a Day?  Well, I think I spent that one day of sun sitting in the unemployment office.  I know it's on its way, it'll be summer overnight and then I will long for rain and fog again.

I am so far behind in writing about the books I've read.  I have this stack of books, maybe a stack 3 feet high, that I've read and really enjoyed and just haven't had the time to write about.  Some are hard to write about because I loved them so much I'm afraid I won't do them justice, some I've wanted to bundle into a theme and review together, some I don't remember as well (duh, I read them back in JANUARY!) so need to refresh my memory (which means re-reading at least enough to remember).  It's hard for me to keep track of everything because I read so much faster than I write.

So! I loved these three books for middle grades, the under-12's, that were all available as of February, two of them appropriately released on Valentine's Day based on the outpouring of love they've received.  They are very different from each other, and yet all so appealing. There's something for everyone in these books.

Wonder, by R. J. Palacio, is a bookseller/librarian's delight.  It's the story of Auggie Pullman, a boy with a facial deformity that keeps him from attending a mainstream school until 5th grade.  When he makes the decision to go to a regular school, he also makes the decision to open himself up to all the bullying and hate that comes to anyone who is different.  In Auggie's mind, he is an ordinary 10 year-old kid who does all the regular 10 year-old kid things.  What's different about him, though, is his face, a face that sends little kids screaming away from him.  Obviously, this will make it difficult for him to be accepted and treated like everyone else.

Wonder is a great read for kids, parents, teachers and librarians.  Maybe it should be an all-school read at the beginning of the school year along with Sahara Special, by Esme Codell?  Auggie only wants the experiences any other kid that age wants.  With all the surgeries he's had, the illnesses he's had, he's only now been strong enough to go to a "regular" school.  He knows it's not going to be easy but he is so willing to try.

There's a lot of crap that gets thrown his way, but there are also lots of people who look beyond his outsides and get to know him as a friend.  This book is NOT goopy or all feel-good-ish.  Descriptions of Auggie's mealtimes are kind of gross, he has a keen sense of humor, and there are lots of people who make fun of him who will never learn better.  I really liked the alternate view points that come up half-way through the book, although I wasn't ready for them.  I was totally in Auggie's head and I was a little disoriented by the change-over.

Wonder took me by surprise and I wish I'd read it as soon as it was in my hands.  It's not too young for older readers, if you can find the right ones.  It isn't sweet or a book about being brave.  It's  really about being ordinary no matter how extraordinary you are, and don't we all deal with that?  Ages 8 and up.  Knopf, $15.99.

Bliss, by Kathryn Littlewood, is one of those magical books that will captivate children from the very first page.  I remember starting this story on a weekend afternoon, settling down to "read" (it's probabley not fair to start a book knowing a nap is imminent) in my great big, comfy chair, and realizing that I'd finished it just as it started to get dark!  No nap because of this book!

It's a fun, quirky book about a family with a little bit of cookery magic, a magic Cookery Booke, and a bakery.  When the Bliss family parents are unexpectedly called out of town, the children break all the rules and bring the Booke out into the kitchen.  Surely a little experimentation with a few Cookies of Truth or Love Muffins won't hurt, right?  The town of Calamity Falls may never be the same.  Stir in a really horrible Aunt Lily who has her sights set on the Booke and the dough really hits the fan.

Bliss is reminiscent of Ingrid Law's Savvy and Jeanne Birdsall's Penderwicks.  It's a really great summer book, light, funny, magical and it would be really fun to have a mother-daughter book group read it and share the cookie recipes they come up with.  Ages 8 and up.  Katherine Tegen Books, $16.99.

The Humming Room, by Ellen Potter, is one of my very favorite books of the season (this season, summer-not the book season since it came out in Feb.).  It's atmospheric and descriptive and filled with legends and ghosts and adventure.  There also are orphans and almost orphans and very prickly children.  It's packed pretty full for a book of only 192 pages!

Roo hides.  She likes to go to ground, find a place close to living dirt, listen to the shifting of roots and worms.  It's the way she's found to be connected to something solid.  Her family, her dad and his girlfriend, are not very stable and one day they are murdered.  Because she is hiding under their trailer, she survives.  Everything finally shakes out and her caseworker finds her last relative, her reclusive Uncle Philip, who reluctantly takes her into his house and his life.

Philip Fanshaw lives on an island in the St. Lawrence river, in a house that was once a children's tuberculosis sanitarium.  It's a big, round place filled with empty rooms and walled off hallways, and nowhere to hide in the bedroom she's been given.  On one of her long rambles through the areas she's allowed she hears someone humming, but, as far as she knows, except for her uncle, herself and the few staff, there's no one else in the house!

Roo eventually finds the source of the humming.  A massive secret no one wants her to know.

I LOVED this book.  There are secret rooms and a dead garden.  There is a nature imp of sorts, a boy who lives on and around the river, who is followed by a heron.  There are sickly children and tantrums thrown.  There are broken adults and healing kids and secrets and nature.  There are legends about the boy on the river and gossip about the owner of the sanitarium.  It is a wonderful book inspired by The Secret Garden and a very good book for summer reading.  It would be a really good read-aloud, if you can keep it from the kids when you aren't looking.

It's a captivating story for ages 9 and up.  Feiwel and Friends, $16.99.

One of the best things about my job is that I get to open the "white box". My heart does a little leap, I get all excitable when I see it sitting next to my desk. In the white box are advanced reading copies from publishers, the books that aren't yet published, that they want us to know about. ABA (American Booksellers Association) member bookstores get these white boxes sent to them once a month and it's like a little birthday party every time.

One of the last boxes was opened in the presence of another children's bookseller, whose name is also Rene, and it was full of KID'S BOOKS! Books of all types are cool, but the YA box really thrills me- One of the best things in this box was a pink and white galley of Sarah Dessen's new book, Along for the Ride. I swooped in and pulled it out of the box, distracting Rene with clever dialogue about the other (almost as good as Sarah's) books that she might really enjoy. In my head, I was yelling, "MINE, MINE, MINE, MINE, MINE!"

Since then, many of us have shared the book and it is beginning to fray along the edges. I know there are at least two meal time mistakes coloring the pages and the cover is starting to curl. I love seeing how ARCs and bound manuscripts age as they get read and passed to the next person who would enjoy them. I often keep the ARCs I love up next to the finished copies of the book because all my memories of the story are in the reading copy.

I think Along for the Ride is Sarah Dessen's best book so far! She writes amazing stories about people who are just like us. Reading her books can let you see your life from the outside, giving you a little perspective on stuff.

She has written books about domestic abuse, teenage pregnancy, absent parents, crushes, pretty much everything you'd want to know about. In Along for the Ride, we meet Auden, her professor mother's perfect child, studious, serious, unable to sleep, wandering in the dark waiting for the next day to come and go. Auden decides to spend the summer away from her mother this year, going to live with her father, his young wife, and their new baby to see if she can separate herself from her regular, normal, life.

The moment Auden arrives in the little beach town, she begins to doubt whether this was a good idea. The baby won't stop screaming, her very young stepmother can't sleep and has no idea what to do, and her father is clueless about everything, putting his needs above all else. What is a girl to do? Well, Auden, being an insomniac and at loose ends, walks the streets of her little town all night, getting familiar with the locals, making a few friends, working at a little boutique, and getting to know Eli, another insomniac. Together, Eli and Auden prowl the town working away at their problems: Auden didn't have much of a childhood, she never learned to ride a bike, and Eli feels great guilt about the death of a friend.


Sarah's books have great characters and great plots, they deal with all kinds of relationships between teens and adults, they are funny and hopeful, and we can't recommend them highly enough. I would suggest a month's worth of Sarah Dessen books for this summer's reading. She has eight (nine?) or so books out, now, just enough to keep one occupied for a bit. Although you may want to whip through them all in a week you should savor them, read something else between, because she doesn't always write a book a year! She takes her time writing each one so it may be a while before the next comes in.

All of Sarah Dessen's books are published by Viking Books. Everything is in paperback now except for Along for the Ride which is $19.99. You adults out there who love a good story with great relationships will thoroughly enjoy Sarah's books. They make for very good Mother-Daughter book group fodder, lots of discussion points without the teenage angsty stuff that most adults seem unable to deal with.