Book Review - TTYL by Lauren Myracle

In honor of Banned Books Week, which runs through this Saturday, I read one of the books from this year's list of the top ten banned books in the United States, TTYL by Lauren Myracle. This is not the first year that Myracle's Internet Girls series has appeared on the list. Written entirely in IM conversations, the first book in the series follows Maddie (mad maddie), Angela (SnowAngel), and Zoe (zoegirl) through the beginning of tenth grade. The three best friends want to make sure that nothing gets in the way of their friendship -- they've heard that high school drama can break up close friendships -- but of course that's exactly what happens, as the threesome take on their individual challenges, whether it's boy troubles, teacher troubles, or friend troubles.

Since it is written in IM speak, this is one of those books where you're zipping through the pages and wanting to read the next one, before you even realize it. Maddie, Angela, and Zoe, are super honest and as familiar as your own friends. There's plenty of laugh-out-loud and cringe-worthy moments in this one, but the girls will have you rooting for them and their friendship through the last page.

* * * *
Four out of five stars
RIYL: other Lauren Myracle books, E. Lockhart, Sarah Dessen

Book Review - The Sweetheart of Prosper County

At the no-Jesus Christmas parade in her small Texas town, 15-year-old Austin Gray decides she's had enough of being the butt of Dean Ottmer's jokes. Next year, if she has any say in it, she'll be the one in the velvet dress atop a parade car. Reminiscent of Catherine Gilbert Murdock's Dairy Queen, Jill S. Alexander's debut novel The Sweetheart of Prosper County, is another book with a rural setting featuring characters with a whole lot of heart.

With her new goal in mind, Austin sets out to start making marks on her checklist, and the first thing on it is acquiring an animal-- a chicken named Charles Dickens. In order to get in with the FFA (Future Farmers of America) in-crowd, she'll need to step out of her comfort zone, and in many more ways than just acquiring a feathered friend. Along the way, she discovers her similarities with her deceased father and learns to stand up to the malicious Dean Ottmer.

RIYL: Catherine Gilbert Murdock or Sara Zarr's books, and/or getting a taste of the South
* * * *
four out of five stars

Book Review - Twenty Boy Summer

If you're back in school and already wishing it were summer (or if the weather's got you fooled into thinking maybe it is still summer), pick up Twenty Boy Summer by debut author Sarah Ockler. This hot title has been checked out constantly this summer, but with the arrival of fall, maybe it will be on the shelf a bit more.

Anna, Matt, and Matt's sister Frankie have been friends and neighbors forever. But after Anna's birthday party, Matt surprises her with a kiss, and it looks like maybe two of them have always had stronger feelings for each other. Sneaking around, Matt and Anna find time for moments between just the two of them. They'll tell Frankie, when the time is right, but for now it's a secret. But their plans are shattered when, in an instant, everything changes. With Matt gone, Anna's left with the secret, but can she really tell her best friend that she's been secretly dating her brother for the past month?

Flash forward to a year later. Anna still hasn't told Frankie, and she's been invited to go out to California with Frankie and her parents, who are practically extended family to Anna. Frankie's changed a lot since her brother's death, and she's got a plan for how they'll spend three weeks on the beach in Cali: twenty boy summer. But is Anna ready to move on? Can she let herself fall for someone that's not Matt and never will be? And what can she do about the secret she's kept from her best friend for a whole year?

Find a spot in the sun and soak up what's left of the summer weather with "Twenty Boy Summer," the kind of book you can devour in an afternoon. Sarah Ockler is a new author to watch, and fans of Sarah Dessen, Susane Colasanti, and Deb Caletti, should check this one out.

* * * 1/2
(three and a half stars)

Book Review - Nation by Terry Pratchett

I'm making my way through the Printz honors of 2009, and I have to say that this might be one of my favorites. Terry Pratchett is best known for his Discworld books and supposedly his hardcore fans might be disappointed with Nation just because it's not a Discworld book. But, if you're like me and you're not a huge fantasy reader, this just might be the best way to dip into Terry Pratchett's world. Nation starts with a catastrophe. A tsunami kills an entire island village while Mau, it's sole survivor is off becoming a man. He returns to find utter devastation -- everyone he knows is dead -- and a ship. Daphne, a royal heir, is also shipwrecked on the island. The baffling collision of their two worlds -- the small island nation and the British empire -- provides for many interesting encounters between Daphne and Mau, who have no choice but to get to know each other, in spite of their language barriers and a world of differences. As other survivors from nearby islands make their way to Mau's island, the novel builds towards another collision of differing factions, this time with Daphne and Mau on the same side.

By the time I finished Nation, I had fallen completely under the spell of Terry Pratchett. His writing is clever and entertaining, and in the right moments, completely tender and heartfelt. As I closed the book, I had to marvel at his talent, and I almost wanted to start all over at the beginning and enjoy it again.

* * * * *
Five out of five stars

RIYL: Terry Pratchett, survival stories, just plain old great books

Vote your choice!

Voting is underway for this year's Teens' Top Ten, the only reading list with titles nominated and voted on by teens. Vote for your favorite book from the last year. The winners will be announced in a webcast at www.ala.org/teenstopten during Teen Read Week, Oct. 18-24.

Book Review - "Along for the Ride" by Sarah Dessen

Anyone who reads this blog will know that I'm a pretty big Sarah Dessen fan. I read her blog every day and it's quite possible that she is the reason I became a teen librarian. Anyway, Along for the Ride is her latest and I bought it at a bookstore the day it came out.

It's the summer before Auden heads off to college at Defriesne, a prestigious university assumed to be not too far away from her hometown in North Carolina. She planned to spend it at her home -- she's been living with her mom, a well-known and well-admired professor at the U since her parent's divorce -- prepping for her fall classes, but an email from her dad's new wife and new mother changes everything. Auden opts out of the expected and enters the unexpected -- moving into her dad's beachside house in Colby with the stepmom and new little sister, Thisbe.

An insomniac looking to explore her temporary hometown, Auden keeps running into Eli, who she learns is a former biker who hasn't been riding since the accident that killed his best friend. They strike up the kind of friendship only two insomniacs can have -- meeting nightly at the Gas/Gro, then letting the evening take them to whatever's open that late. But then something more develops (a Sarah Dessen book is not complete without a romance) as Eli leads Auden to do all those thing she missed by being an overworked brainiac in high school.

But a person can't just change overnight (pun not intended). When a familiar scenario startles Auden in her new environs, she reverts back to her old ways, distancing herself from the one person she'd become real close with in Colby. But there's still time left in the summer for things to change, and a beachside fake prom.

Like all of Sarah Dessen's books, this one offers a world you wouldn't mind stepping into, that's familiar to your own, but somehow a little better.

* * * *
Four out of five stars

RIYL: Susan Colasanti, Sara Zarr, Elizabeth Scott, contemporary realistic fiction

Trio of Book Reviews!

Intensely Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
It's the summer before Alice's last year of high school, and it starts off just like all the others, with the gang hanging out at Mark Stedmeister's pool. But this summer turns out to be full of surprises, both exhilarating, challenging, and devastating. Alice's cousin Carol is getting married in Chicago, which just happens to be where Patrick is starting school (at MY alma mater, the University of Chicago), so Alice visits him on campus. Lester busts out of town for a week, allowing Alice and her friends to stay at his place, and of course, this doesn't go exactly as planned. And at the end of the summer, something happens that no one expected, that changes the gang forever. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor does it again with the latest Alice book, a compulsively readable book for fans of the series, and one that could certainly pique interest for those that don't know every detail about Alice McKinley...yet. YA FIC NAY

Queen of Everything by Deb Caletti
Watching the evening news, do you ever wonder about the grisly lead stories, the ones where a seemingly normal person does something you can't even comprehend. Do you wonder, who was this person, and what kind of family did he/she have? Well, this is one of those ripped-from-the-headlines stories, told from the perspective of the headline-maker's daughter, Jordan. Jordan's parents have been divorced for awhile. Her mother runs a bed and breakfast, and her dad's your average eye doctor... until he meets Gayle. Jordan notices that her dad's become completely unlike himself ever since he met Gayle, and not in a good way. Gayle has taken his life by storm, and Jordan's unsettled. As his behavior becomes more erratic, one wild, stormy night changes everything. Jordan's life will never be the same. Fans of Deb Caletti's other work will appreciate her realistic, nuanced take on a story like this -- though it's not my personal favorite of hers. Recommended also to fans of Sarah Dessen's books. YA FIC CAL

The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams
I'd been hearing a lot of buzz about this one, so I devoured it last night watching the Red Sox-Yankees game. Thirteen year old Kyra has grown up in an isolated, polygamist community, where no one questions the authority of the Prophet, even as he leads his community's members to do what anyone else would consider, horrible, reproachable things. But Kyra has recently started to come into her own, first when Joshua, a guy around her age, shows interest in her, and in her trips to the library bookmobile. (Her community had a cleansing years ago when they burned every book there, except for the Bible.) She has passing thoughts about wanting to leave, but they become more serious when the Prophet comes to visit her family. She has been chosen to marry Hyrum, her sixty year old uncle. The rest of the book oscillates between Kyra thinking she can escape, and realizing how difficult, and potentially suicidal it could be. The gripping end will keep you on the edge of your seat, or at the very least, up past your bedtime. The writing is spare, at times poetic, and completely true to the thirteen year old narrator. Recommended for those who read Sister Wife and are fascinated by the reality of polygamous compounds existing in certain areas of the United States right now. YA FIC WIL