I definitely did not feel that way, so I feel like I need to add my thoughts to the mix. I found the self-deprecating adolescent-boy humor funny for awhile, and then it got tired. (A. J. Jacobs in the NYTimes counted 29 times that Ryan Dean, the narrator, calls himself a loser. By my count that’s about 20 times too many.) I was engaged by the characters for awhile, until it seemed that nothing was ever going to happen to them and I lost interest. There is no reason this needs to be 448 pages long, I thought — Perks of Being a Wallflower told roughly the same story in about a third of that.

But those are all matters of opinion, and clearly lots of people wanted to spend another 450 pages with these characters. There’s a lot of charm in Winger, and I don’t begrudge Andrew Smith his success at all, or judge the people who love the book.

Except. No one is dealing with the ending in their reviews beyond using words like “shocking” and “stunning.” I found the ending of this book disturbing in exactly the wrong way, and I feel like I need to talk about it — if nothing else, for the benefit of the three librarians who read this and might be better prepared if they recommend this book.

GIGANTIC SPOILER

ALSO VIOLENCE TRIGGER WARNING

…OK:

Twenty pages from the end of the book, Ryan Dean’s close friend Joey, who is gay, is beaten to death by a psychotic closet case classmate. From the time Ryan Dean learns this, he has literally ten pages to process it and start to heal. Those ten pages cover a matter of months. This after devoting 200 pages to a week in which he plays a lot of rugby and moons after a girl. To say the pacing here is off would be a drastic understatement.

There’s some foreshadowing, but this is hardly a book about what it’s like to be a gay kid in high school — let alone one with murderously psychotic acquaintances. It’s only sometimes about what it’s like to be friends with a gay kid in high school. Not that I need a book to only be about one thing, of course — this is a slice of high school life, and high school life contains multitudes. But something so huge and so shocking knocks us right out of “slice of life” territory. An act like that demands to be processed, considered, lived with for more than ten pages.

Since that’s all we get, I have to ask, what is the point of Joey’s death in this story? I’m sure this isn’t how Smith meant it, but it felt like the gay friend died so we could watch the straight protagonist be tortured briefly and then share a healing moment with his girlfriend. Joey’s death felt like it wasn’t about Joey at all but about Ryan Dean. Considering that Ryan Dean spent the preceding 438 pages processing and considering every little interaction he had with the people in his life, I found his ten-page transition from self-absorbed grief to self-absorbed healing after Joey’s death to be abrupt and offensive. I thought we were past the era in which gay YA characters have to die to make a point?

Also reviewed by: Kirkus, which starred it. Like I said, everyone loved this but me. If you read it, I’d be curious what you think!

I received a review copy from the publisher.

I am blown away by how much Johnson packs into this under-300-page novel. Love and friendship and family, the conflict between old and young when people live well into their third century, technology and its discontents, class and privilege, art and its revolutionary power. Oh, and this is a world ruled by women, because the founders of Palmares Tres believed men were the cause of the war that flattened most of the planet. So there’s an underlying gender conflict, too.

And when I say this story is about love, I should mention that in Palmares Tres, bisexuality is the norm, such that it isn’t even remarked upon by the characters or the text. This book is explicitly about desire and sexuality, but it never feels base or gratuitous. June and Gil and Enki love each other, and sex is an expression of that love, the same way art is. (It’s an odd comparison, but it felt very Weetzie Bat in that way.) It was such a relief to read a story in which the love triangle isn’t a competition (and certainly not two boys fighting over a girl), and no one expects One True Wuv 4-Eva.

A confusing first few chapters is the sign of quality worldbuilding: it means the world is deep and contradictory, and the characters inhabit it too fully to exposit all its rules in an awkward “learning our history” classroom scene. Johnson’s worldbuilding is astounding; she is worthy of your trust through that confusion.

There is no sequel planned, and thank goodness for no clumsy cliffhangers. I want to spend more time in Palmares Tres, but I hope, if Johnson feels the same, that she’ll tell a story in which June, Gil, and Enki are only background players. I loved them, but for me the world was the star of the show, and I want to see facets of it that these characters can’t show me.

By the way, I hate to reduce a book this substantial to a checklist, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that here we have an author of color writing a YA novel about bisexual characters of color in a non-European society, published by a major house (Scholastic). That’s a greatest hits list of holes in the YA publishing field. Read The Summer Prince because it’s amazing, buy it because we need a hell of a lot more like it.

Recommendations: Definitely older YA, shading into adult. As I said, teen sex is explicit and its wisdom unquestioned, the world is confusing at first, and the choices the characters make are mature. I’ve never taught a middle schooler I’d give it to. Teen fans of Melina Marchetta’s Lumatere trilogy or Daughter of Smoke and Bone or Karen Healey, yes! And adult readers of science fiction, if you want something shorter than you’re used to with plenty to feel and chew on, I’d love to hear what you think.

Also reviewed by: Phoebe North at Intergalactic Academy, Finding Wonderland, and Confessions of a Bibliovore

For such a small space with such narrow focus, it is undoubtedly one of the glitziest museums I’ve ever seen. They make liberal use of new holographic technology, which is remarkably effective. For several moments, we weren’t sure whether the Tory and Patriot women arguing on Griffin’s Wharf were actors or holograms. The Lexington & Concord film is stirring, with high production values; it wouldn’t look out of place on the History Channel. The ships are beautifully detailed (look for the rat hiding in what I guessed to be the first mate’s cabin). And our actors/tour guides were funny and engaging.

All that pomp added up to some real emotion. These colonists had incredibly difficult, scary decisions to make, and I felt that at several points along the tour. (When King George defended the Townsend Act as a unanimous act of Parliament, I found myself grumbling, “Wow, what a surprise,” just like I do while watching the State of the Union.) “History is so boring” is one of the saddest sentences I hear from my students, because it means they’ve lost the story part. I love any book, movie, or museum that makes history about what could have happened as much as what did happen.

But that engagement needs to be followed up with real learning, and that’s where the museum fell flat. Because it’s all first-person, there’s never an opportunity to educate from a modern perspective. I had so many questions! There’s a black Minuteman in the movie: was that historically accurate? How did African-Americans fit into this story? When the Sons of Liberty dressed as Mohawks because that was a “symbol of liberty,” what on earth was that about? For heaven’s sake, can we talk about the shortcomings of their “liberty”? (When a picture of a traditionally dressed Native American floated by during the movie’s rousing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” concluding montage, I threw up in my mouth a little.)

Not only that, but what about the ships? Were they built for this museum or restored? Were they the actual Tea Party ships? Even the website just says “authentically restored” — from what? The captain’s furniture wasn’t bolted down, the dishes were displayed in open shelves. This was designed with theater rather than authenticity in mind, but there’s no meta-commentary to say so, and that calls into question the authenticity of the entire presentation.

Overall, it’s more Disney than PBS. Go, but do a little reading on your own before and after.

Now my blog is a teenager, who appears to be doing the bloggy equivalent of

“How was school today, honey?”
Grunt

I’m not sure where this blog is going or what she has to say right now. But I know that I can’t imagine who I’d be if I weren’t Parenthetical.

1. The guy who’s a weirdo but having a good time is way more fun to hang out with than the guy who’s too cool for everything you enjoy.
2. Girls aren’t aliens. (And the corollary, neither are boys.)
3. Everybody does completely humiliating stuff all the time. It will be okay.

Origami Yoda approaches these truths honestly. Its middle schoolers are both likeable and behave like real middle schoolers, which is something of a feat: sometimes when you get inside a kid’s head, he’s not a misunderstood sensitive soul. Sometimes the things he’s thinking really are kind of mean. But hey, that’s true of us all, right? This book never labels kids bullies for behaving like kids; it just quietly and hilariously moves them towards a slightly more mature view of the world.

Using an origami Yoda finger puppet on the hand of the weirdest kid in school.

My kids are all about the diary-format-with-doodles right now (thanks, Wimpy Kid!). The cover hasn’t been selling it to them — as eye-catching and adorable as it is — because most 6th grade girls are not immediately drawn to Yoda, but now that I’ve read it I can pitch it as a Wimpy Kid read-alike and they will be all over that. This is an easy cross-gender-appeal book: boys will see themselves in the protagonists, and girls will get an enticing window into the boys’ lunch table while being amused at the boys’ fear of theirs. The friendship issues and humor are universal. Definite 4th-7th grade winner!

Also reviewed by: Pink Me, Betsy Bird

Eve & Adam is way too much like Cinder to be truly original, but Cinder was totally original and this is the first copycat I’ve seen, so I’ll take it.

As for Supergirl Mixtapes, I adore the cover and the title, but since my students have never encountered a “mixtape” in their lives, I have to suspect that I am the target audience — ie., women in their mid-thirties who read YA. I guess that’s a burgeoning audience in its own right!

(Thanks again for all the books, Anita!)

Fossil fuels sure are seductively powerful, but it turns out that they’re dangerously dirty. And we’ve known this for a very long time.

The March… OF SCIENCE

The pitch:

The review: There are precious few good lesbian YA novels. Thanks for writing an awesome one, Lisa Jenn! Let me count the things I love:

I love that Colby’s orientation is only part of her story. The book is about figuring out all of her relationships: with her friends, her dad, the dog she rescues from the side of the road, the dog’s vet…

At the same time, I love that the relationship issues are central and don’t pull punches. Characters fight about coming out, recognizing that they need to do so in order to be true to themselves and to have the kind of relationships they want with their families, but they don’t pretend that will be easy — and it isn’t. In at least one case, a character recognizes that it might not even be possible, that her family’s prejudices might be too hard to overcome. As much as I love books set in Boy Meets Boy rainbow fantasy land, where gay high school relationships can proceed exactly like straight ones, that’s sadly not the world most teenagers live in. (Yet.)

I love how issues of class are introduced sensitively but honestly. Colby and her best friend Van make it clear they aren’t poor, but money is an issue. Van picks up cans along the highway to earn the deposits for spending money. Colby works long hours at a grocery store. And, of course, her dad is a long-haul trucker because it’s more lucrative than the jobs he could get closer to home; Colby’s anger at his absence is one of the main conflicts of the story.

I love that when Colby screws up, she screws up. It’s believable, and it’s also not easy to fix. She has to have some hard conversations, and while some go a little too smoothly, most of the people she’s hurt don’t let her off the hook easily.

Overall, I just love the feel of the book. I read it weeks ago, and its warmth has really stayed with me: Colby’s trailer all decorated for Christmas, the heavy sigh of the dog on the couch, the warmth of Robyn the vet’s kitchen.

I do have a few quibbles:

The Gay/Straight Alliance chat room conversations were distracting and didn’t add much to the story.

Colby’s father’s extended absences seemed to border on neglect — he was only home one or two nights a week, leaving a high school junior basically living alone. None of the other adults in Colby’s life (her GSA advisor, Robyn the vet) seemed as concerned about this as they should have been.

And as refreshingly honest as everyone is about their money troubles throughout the book, they seem to disappear in the overly sunshiny ending: Colby’s dad gives up the trucking jobs for some unspecified (and less lucrative, according to the arguments he made the whole book) job closer to home, yet they still have money for Colby to quit her job to play soccer without even a discussion?

These really are totally minor quibbles, though. Overall, I loved it to death. Colby reminded me of D. J. Schwenk from Dairy Queen, and really, there is no higher praise.

(There are still basically no lesbian novels that are appropriate for kids under the age of 15, alas. Some second-base action and suggestion of more keeps this one firmly in the high school realm.)

Also reviewed by: Bonjour Cass (who has some lovely things to say about how the book handles Colby’s relationship with her late mother) and After Ellen (who points out how great it is that Colby never questions her sexual identity, just how others will deal with it).

The pitch:

The review: …I guess? The actual plot doesn’t feel that clear, and the pacing is way, way off, and things that should be symbols are literal and vice versa. The OPT is pretty important for awhile, but why does she really need to take it? There’s a lot about needing to meet eight other princesses who live on the other side of the island, but why are they just sitting there, and what will meeting them accomplish? What’s the current situation in Raven World? Is Bee in a rush to get back there so she can do her duty as the heir, or isn’t she — and if not, why on earth not?

It feels like a book written by someone who doesn’t know how to write for kids. (Alice Randall is the author of The Wind Done Gone, so she is an accomplished author for adults; Caroline Randall Williams is her daughter, a first-time author.) Writing for kids isn’t about cobbling together fantasy elements (orphan, princess, destiny, prophecy, journey of self-discovery, romance) to create a feel-good Important Message. Kids need world-building, and they need mysteries whose answers fit with the world that has been created. They need a clear plot with a conflict and a journey and a goal (or more than one, of course, but they should be clear).

And messages are well and good, but the message needs to emerge organically from the story or kids will roll their eyes as much as I did. This book screamed so loudly, “You are beautiful and brilliant and worthy and girl power and black power and boys are nice but you need to be yourself first and environmentalism and self-sufficiency and world peace and btw Shakespeare and chess and vocabulary words are awesome!!!!” that as much as I love every single one of those messages, the presentation of them in this story made me weary.

I can’t help but be fairly sure that the authors started this book with “Let’s write a book to show black girls that they can be powerful, pretty princesses” rather than “Hey, what if this beekeeping black girl on a magical island were secretly an orphaned princess?” And message-first is death to any book, for kids or adults.

Also reviewed by: Kirkus, A Wrung Sponge, and Crazy QuiltEdi. Everyone loves it but me. I’ll be curious what my students think — I think I’m usually pretty good at predicting (possibly because I have the reading sophistication of a 12-year-old), but I have been wrong before!