Plans for the 48-Hour Book Challenge

So, MotherReader announced the official date and rules for the Seventh Annual 48-Hour Book Challenge about two weeks ago. If you've never  heard of such a thing, here's the lowdown on one of the Kidlitosphere's tentpole events.

Basically, we pick a span of 48 hours within the selected weekend and read. Yep. That's it in a nutshell. We read for 48 hours, or as close to it as we can get without suffering hallucinations. We also blog about it. So, we read and we blog for 48 hours. If you read that description and went, "Ooo!", think about joining us. If you read that and went, "Wow, these people are cool but nuts" . . . think about joining us anyway. There are very few hardcore enough to actually read for 48 hours straight. I myself have never broken the 30 hour mark because, y'know, sleep. I like it.

(If you read that and went, "Why would anyone want to read for 48 minutes, much less 48 hours?" I don't think you're on the right blog.)

We also gab on Twitter, Facebook, and each others' blogs. And finally, we tally up what we've done and pledge money to various charities. This year, MotherReader has formalized it and asked us all to donate to Book People Unite for Reading is Fundamental, which has had its budget slashed like a cheerleader in a horror flick.

It's a community-builder (all that gabbing!), it's a marathon, it winnows down our TBR stacks, it flexes our blogging muscles, and it's a way of harnessing all that energy into doing good. How can you lose?

I've been contemplating my plan of attack. I tend to pick a theme and stick with it. I've done Books I Told Someone I'd Read, ARC-a-Palooza, and Books I Can't Wait to Read. I've had the best success with the last theme, so I'll go with that again. I'm already trawling through my LibraryThing wishlist and putting in my order at work for those books that make me do a little happy chair dance.

In past years, I've written each review and put them up immediately . . . then proceeded to let my blog stagnate over the summer, because a children's librarian during Summer Reading Program is analogous to a one-armed paper hanger. So this year, I'm still going to write the reviews, but what I'll post during 48HBC will be the bare-bones info about the book and the time, plus capsules or comments. Then I'll have a backlog of reviews to go up during the summer. This will be especially handy since many of things I already know I want to read are electronic ARCs from NetGalley, some many months out, and I prefer to post those as close to the actual street date as I can.

So that's my plan. What about yours? Will you join us? Will you cheer us on? What will you read? Share!

Book Review: Keeper by Kathi Appelt

Book: Keeper
Author: Kathi Appelt
Published: 2010
Source: Local Library

On Texas's Gulf Coast, a motley little family has assembled itself out of broken flotsam. But ten-year-old Keeper has never stopped yearning for her real mother, Meggie Marie, who swam away to be a mermaid when she was three. After her own carelessness and impulsive actions destroy a special day, Keeper feels as if she has likewise destroyed her makeshift family forever. But she just knows her mermaid mother will be able to fix everything.

Armed with offerings for the Sea Queen, Yemaya, she takes her beloved dog and sets off to sea. But the open ocean is a big and dangerous place for a girl and her dog. Will her true family find her in time?

Like Appelt's earlier book, The Underneath, this novel is firmly rooted in a place (in this case, the Texas Gulf Coast), and in the idea of family assembled rather than born. It's not an action-packed heart-thumper of a book, although there are certainly tense moments. It meanders, it daydreams, it wanders. It has that magical-realism-type acceptance of the marvelous and fantastical next to the everyday. You have to assemble the real stories from the crumbs dropped by the author.

But it will suck you in, this book, with its magical-realism tone and deep-running emotional themes that will resonate with anybody who's ever felt the power of love, no matter where it comes from.

Book Review: Dani Noir by Nova Ren Suma

Book: Dani Noir
Author: Nova Ren Suma
Published: 2009
Source: Purchased

Dani wishes that life were like the old movies she watches in the town art house. The good guys would be good, the bad guys would be bad, and she, Dani, would be Rita Hayworth, sexy, confident, and untouchable. In the movies, your dad never dumps your mom for a new girlfriend. Or if he does, you're not expected to make nice with them. No self-respecting femme fatale would make nice with the other woman.

That's why she's not about to take it lying down when she realizes that her adored babysitter's boyfriend may be cheating on her. By hook or by crook, Dani's going to find out if Jackson's a good guy or a bad guy.

But life's not like the movies. The good guys are sometimes the bad guys, and the bad guys are sometimes the good guys, and Dani herself is most definitely not untouchable.

I tried to read Imaginary Girls, Suma's YA novel, but I didn't finish it. Not only did I not finish it, I hurled it aside with great force, a la Dorothy Parker. And frankly, after that experience, I was stunned that this book charmed me so completely.

I'm not sure why I had such a bad reaction, but I know why I liked Dani Noir, and that's all down to Dani. She's a thoroughly real kid, just coming to the realization that the people she loves best aren't perfect. Smart, resourceful, and honest (sometimes to a fault). She makes mistakes, she doesn't know how to fix them. She's not always clear on who her real friends are, or what other people are thinking or feeling. But by god, she's gonna figure it out.

I truly hope that Suma writes more books like Dani Noir.

Reading Roundup: April 2012

By the Numbers
Teen: 15
Tween: 11
Children: 6

Sources
Review Copies: 5
Purchased: 6
Library: 19

Standouts
Teen: The DUFF by Kody Keplinger
Hey, did you know teens handle sex about like adults do? They get with the wrong partners, they do it for the wrong reasons, it's all tangled up with their inner lives, and sometimes love (or serious like) comes as a total revelation. You didn't? Kody Keplinger does.
Tween: Dani Noir by Nova Ren Suma
Maybe if she had credits to refer to, Dani would know who she's supposed to hate and who she's supposed to like, and all the good guys would ride off into the sunset together. Unfortunately, life's not like the movies.
Children: Hamster and Cheese by Colleen A.F. Venable and Stephanie Yue
In the mood for a graphic novel? Something a little more challenging than an easy reader, but still conquerable? A quirky, funny tale? A story about a reluctant private eye? An animal book? In this first installment of the Pet Shop Private Eye series, Venable and Yue have gotcha covered.

Because I Want To Awards
Best First Line: The Exile of Gigi Lane by Adrienne Maria Vrettos
"I'm Gigi Lane, and you wish you were me." Seriously, put the book down after that. I dare you.
What Are the Odds?: This Means War! by Ellen Wittlinger and Countdown by Deborah Wiles
I had no idea I'd be reading not one but two great books this month about the Cuban Missile Crisis, seen through the eyes of kids on the perimeter of the military and filtered through their everyday hopes, fears, and struggles. I just wish the first had gotten a little more critical love.
Bring a Hanky: Dear Anjali by Melissa Glenn Haber
This book about a girl struggling to come to terms with her best friend's sudden death goes beyond "She'll always be with me" and into "You know, she wasn't perfect, but that's okay, because that's the way I wanted her." Man, you guys, I was a mess.
And Now, I Taunt You: Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan
Complicated relationships, witty banter, a healthy dollop of supernatural hijinks . . . yep, sounds like SRB to me. You'll see the review on this one closer to its publication in September. Yeah, I'm evil.

Post-Apocalyptic Double Feature: Nomansland by Lesley Hauge and After the Snow by S.D. Crockett

Book: Nomansland
Author: Leslie Hague
Published: 2010
Source: Purchased

They spend their lives in training, constantly preparing against the enemy that could destroy their peaceful society. They're told the dangers of being soft, of being unprepared. If they succumb to the enemy, their lives will be taken from them and they will be subject to torture, rape, and the loss of their own will. They must be ever-vigilant against the enemy.

Men.

But one girl has discovered a secret treasure trove of items from before, when girls were soft and weak. Intoxicated by this mysterious new world, a small group of girls spends hours and hours exploring things like makeup, high heels, and soft beds. But the leaders of their society have a vested interest in keeping them away from these things, and it can't last forever.

I feel as if this was the first half of a book, and we were supposed to get a second half where the narrator, Keller, who has already started to tentatively explore the idea that men may not be entirely awful, gets proof first-hand. Unfortunately, she's mostly an onlooker to a corrupt society, brutally punishing an outlier, and this weakens the power of the book for me. I never felt as if I got beyond stereotypes in any character. The single exception, oddly enough, was Dayna, who never truly appears except through the treasure trove of her bedroom. With makeup next to soccer trophies, stuffed animals and posters of dreamboats, this super-typical teenage girl, long-dead, defies stereotypes in a way that the girls of Foundland never quite achieve.The premise was intriguing, but it needed stronger characterization and a more powerful story to really make it shine.

Book: After the Snow
Author: S.D. Crockett
Published: March 27, 2012
Source: Review Copy from publisher via NetGalley

His family has disappeared, taken away by the government men, and Willo is on his own in an icy, snowbound landscape. He knows his job--first, to survive, the way he's always been taught. Second, to find them.

The voice reminded me strongly of Blood Red Road, one of my favorites from last year. The dialect may drive people crazy, but I got used to it, and followed Willo through the frozen wasteland that is his world, into the grinding poverty of a broken city and the secrets of his family.

We never really meet the family, and that may be the source of my biggest complaint against this book. With no particular attachment to them, I never felt any sense of urgency for Willo to find his family, and honestly it didn't seem as if he did either. Granted, this is a kid who talks a lot tougher and more detached than his actions show, and maybe we're supposed to parse out his love for his family between the lines. But I think if we'd seen even one scene with them, as opposed to scattered memories, it would have lent his quest a lot more urgency. As it is, Willo seems to drift through the book, and I often had to remind myself of what his purpose was and why I was reading. A promising voice, but it needed more substantive world building and character development for me to get excited.

* * *

So why is this a double feature? And why, as underwhelmed as I was, am I talking about them at all? Because I read these books virtually back-to-back, and noticed the same thing about both of them. I was waiting for something that never came . . . specifically, the Big Lurve Story. Willo encounters some girls/women but never really falls in WUV! (Thank God, because one girl is thirteen, another is a sociopath, and the third gets killed messily.) Keller, for her part, doesn't have first-hand contact with the male of the species until the very last page, and it's hardly in a situation to promote the swoonage.

We're so used to having a love story in a dystopia these days that fans and media lend it far more importance that it really merits in the story. See: the Hunger Games. While I like the love story, it's not even close to what the whole thing is about, and I cringe for Suzanne Collins whenever I see something like "The Hotties of the Hunger Games!" Of course, hotties are an easier sell than revolution.

While I had problems with both these books, the lack of a love story was not one of them and it's something that made them both stand out for me. YA authors, don't put in a love story unless it's there.

Book Review: Grave Mercy by R.L. LaFevers

Book Review: Grave Mercy
Author: Robin LaFevers
Published: April 3, 2012
Source: Review copy from publisher, via NetGalley

Sold off to a brutish husband, Ismae escapes and finds both salvation and purpose at the convent of St. Mortain. These nuns don't just do good works. They learn the art of death, and their saint--a god of old--sends them on his dark missions to destroy the enemies of Brittany.

For her first big assignment, Ismae is sent to the royal court, posing as the mistress of Duval, the Duchess's bastard half-brother. It's her job to execute the enemies of Brittany, but who exactly are they? Political machinations swirl around the young Duchess, Anne of Brittany, as she fights to keep her homeland free from the grasp of the encroaching French. In the midst of rumors, betrayal, and uncertainty, Ismae discovers that nobody she trusted has told her the truth. And the one person she's sure she shouldn't trust may be the only one she can.

Isame has spent years in fulfilling servitude at the convent. But now her god, her abbess, and her heart all want different things, and she's afraid it may be a fight to the death

This book has been lurking around in my head ever since I read it, mostly because it sits on that line between YA and adult fiction. True, the main character is in her late teens, but she's moving in a highly adult world of politics, betrayal, and morality, not to mention the unique historical setting. I was about a quarter of the way through this novel when I had to fire up Wikipedia and figure out who Anne of Brittany was and what exactly was going on. It's a bit of European history that I hadn't heard much about, which is a shame, because it's fascinating. As I read further in the book, it became clearer, and I think that a kid who's used to complicated fantasy politics might not mind. I can't speak to its strict historical accuracy, but then we're discussing a book with a nun/assassin who gets cues from the god of Death.

There's a real density about this book. Complex characters, convoluted plots, questions that remain unanswered; it's not beach reading. But Ismae, tough, prickly, strong, uncertain Ismae, kept me going, as well as her gradual and cautious romance with Duval, himself at least as dangerous as Ismae. If sexy stuff gets your goat, be warned, it is discussed and there's a fade-to-black scene. But I felt it worked in this context.

The dense historical detail and the dark touches make this unique book one you'll have to save for those kids (and adults!) that will appreciate it.

Reading Roundup: March 2012

By the Numbers
Teen: 10
Tween: 11
Children: 13

Sources
Review Copies: 10
Purchased: 4
Library: 12

Standouts
Teen: Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
I am an evil, evil person for mentioning this because it won't even be out for months. But. I LOVED IT. Dragons and war and politics and adventure and romance and the deeply practical, quick-witted, identity-confused girl at the center of it all. Review closer to publication.
Tween: The Truth About My Bat Mitzvah by Nora Raleigh Baskin
I kept looking for this book because it promised to be about faith and coming of age, two of my particular loves. It brings that, but it's mostly about a girl coming to terms with her beloved grandmother's death and how her faith plays into that.
Children: Keeper by Kathi Appelt
I have a half-written review in my drafts, trying to put my finger on why this book about the Gulf Coast and mothers and cobbled-together families captured my heart. Guys, I don't know why, but it did.

Because I Want To Awards
Why Didn't I Grow Up in New York City?: Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithin
Just like Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, this book made me long to live in New York. At least over Christmas. Don't talk to me about the rents. This is my fantasyland.
Darker Than I Expected: Alibi Junior High by Greg Logsted
Okay, a kid raised in the CIA going to regular school for the first time? Should be laff-a-minute. But with lingering PTSD, a secondary character that's an amputee from the Afghanistan war, and the complicated realization that the way he was raised was completely crazeballs, this is a book with a little more meat on it.
I Love You, David Wiesner: June 29, 1999 by David Wiesner
Yes, this is an older one. I happened across it on my shelves, and I remembered why I'm a David Wiesner fangirl. It leads you blithely in one completely kooky direction, and at the last minute, cuts away and drops the reality (also deliciously kooky) into your lap.
Just Try and Keep It on Your Shelves: If Dinosaurs Lived Today by Dougal Dixon and M.J. Benton
Just for the picture of a bear fighting a dinosaur for a salmon, you need this book. But more, it's a book that posits dinosaurs in our world, speculates on what they'd eat and who'd eat them and how humans would use them. Too, too cool.