Parenthetical

Best friends Kayla and Mishalla are GENs, Genetically Engineered Non-humans. In other words, slaves. Built in tanks from human and animal DNA, designed with special “skets” (skill sets), they are at the bottom of the strictly hierarchical society humans have built on their colony planet Loka. They have no say about where they work, where [...]

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In the third book about differences in perception, Mia is not autistic but synesthetic. Her whole life she’s seen letters and numbers in particular colors, and seen colored shapes when she hears loud noises. She learned to hide it at a young age, but now that she’s thirteen she wants to be honest about who [...]

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I’ve just read three books about kids with different ways of perceiving the world, and because they’re thematically linked (also to catch up on reviews quicker) I’ll review two together: Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko, and Anything But Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin. Al Capone, my favorite of the two, takes place [...]

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Piper, a deaf high school senior who leads the chess team, gets good grades, and generally stays invisible, is a pretty unlikely choice to manage a rock band. But when she mouths off to the cocky lead singer of Dumb about how they could make some money if they’d quit living up to their name, [...]

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The moment when Helen Keller, splashing water over her hand, connects Annie Sullivan spelling W-A-T-E-R with the concept of “water” is part of our national mythology. This is Annie’s story up to that point — her arrival at the Kellers’, her attempts to tame Helen from a wild brat into a civilized child, her own [...]

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I’m not even going to try to summarize this one, except to say: interweaving of Snow White & Rose Red, Rumpelstiltskin, and probably some other tales into a lyrical novel with the most sexual creepiness I have had the misfortune to encounter in awhile. This is an excellent example of a book marketed to young [...]

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Three three-dimensional best friends, families that genuinely love each other, disability and homosexuality just tossed in like the normal parts of life they are, and it’s even set in Boston! Sold. The plot is complicated — there’s a deaf kid, a theater production, a wacky road trip to New York (does it count as a [...]

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In two weeks I’ll be heading to the Simmons College Children’s Literature Summer Institute. Three days of talks by and schmoozing with fabulous authors, editors, and other people working in the children’s lit field (not to mention some dear friends). So excited! I realized that I’m unfamiliar with the work of a number of people [...]

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Bobby Phillips, Ordinary Teenage Guy, wakes up one morning to find that he’s invisible. His mom freaks out, his physicist dad is obsessed with figuring out why, but Bobby’s just trying to live his invisible life. One day, while slinking around the library, he bumps into a blind girl named Alicia — who becomes his [...]

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