Parenthetical.net

Now that the Cybils winners are all official ‘n stuff, I can review the finalists from the Middle Grade Fantasy & Science Fiction category. Here they are, in one speedy blowout:

The Prince of Fenway Park, Julianna Baggott
Check this premise, people: the famous Curse on [...]

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Oh, read it read it read it! If you liked The Hunger Games, you must absolutely read this book. And that means that you should skip everything past the “spoilers” cut, because you really don’t want to be spoiled.
Basically, Prentisstown is a human settlement on an alien planet. There was a war [...]

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Another conference speaker with whom I was unfamiliar. She’s also a jazz singer, and gave us a lovely impromptu a capella performance (just reinforcing the sense that I was at a folk festival).
I’ll admit, I found her book tiresome. The prose is lovely, I guess, but it was a Woman’s Sexual Awakening and [...]

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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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I wrote a whole long thoughtful review of Savvy a couple of days ago and thought it had posted happily — only to notice today that it actually crashed my whole blog and then got eaten by WordPress. Rar!
I’m too cranky to re-write the whole thing or to be “fair and balanced,” so [...]

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On his way back from the Boys’ Island to his coming-of-age feast, Mau survives the giant tidal wave that wipes out his entire Nation. On her way to join her father at his new island governorship, Daphne’s ship is caught in the same wave and runs aground on Mau’s island; she is the only [...]

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This was a request from Zix, who wanted to know what I thought of this after reading Luna. (I do take requests, btw — if there’s a YA novel you want me to review, just let me know! I’d rather post stuff I know people want to read.)
Parrotfish opens in the middle of [...]

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Zoe dreams of being a piano prodigy, of playing classical music at Carnegie Hall in a long, elegant dress. But her agoraphobic dad has trouble saying no to salesmen, so instead of a piano, what she gets is a Perfectone organ and a chance to perform Neil Diamond’s “Forever in Blue Jeans” at the [...]

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Chiggers are a bug that get under your skin and itch; let’s get that out of the way right off the bat. In this book, they’re the plot device that gets one girl out of Abby’s cabin at camp, and a new girl, Shasta, in. Shasta claims to have been struck by lightning, [...]

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(Janes in Love is the nominated book, but I went back and read The Plain Janes first, so I’ll review them together. It’s not necessary background, but it certainly helped.)
PJ opens with a terrorist bomb going off in Metro City, killing a number of people, and injuring more — including Jane. She’s fine, [...]

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