“I can never decide which book I want, and I hate buying a book and then realizing halfway through that I hate it. I can’t just return it and I’ve wasted money. I wish there were a way I could just borrow a book instead.”

You can borrow books and return them if you would just GO THE FUCK TO THE LIBRARY.

This website is pretty entertaining. I don’t feel like commenting on it seriously, because just about everything that makes me laugh right now is rooted in something that pisses me off. It’s that kind of month.

At least I finally feel like a bunch of people are sharing my anger and doing something with it.

KS: What do you think about the role of wrongness in education? It seems to me that making mistakes is crucial to learning, yet by and large mistakes are discouraged and punished in our schools.

DR: We have reshaped the education system — largely through federal legislation — to an approach of “right answers, right answers, right answers.” But life’s not like that. We’re putting a tremendous amount of value on being able to pick the right one out of four little bubbles. But this turns out not to be a very valuable skill. You can’t take this skill out into the workplace and get paid for it.

I love hearing a policy-maker admit that she changed her mind and talk about how she got there. If you care about public education (or wrongness in politics), I encourage you to read the whole thing.

The interview is a year old, part of Kathryn Schulz’s series in Slate The Wrong Stuff, in which she interviews people about being wrong. It’s kind of brilliant, and I definitely plan to read her book, Being Wrong.

(Irritatingly, Slate’s formatting doesn’t distinguish between when the interviewer and the subject are speaking. I added the “KS” and “DR” above to make it easier to follow.)

Ok. From there, I made some assumptions. Deena’s going to show up repeatedly and suck. Addie’s a flake who can’t give Hope a stable life, and/or she’s created a “just us girls” emotionally dependent situation. But Addie turns out to be a pretty solid mom; the moves were about bad luck as much as anything. Deena does suck, but she only shows up once.

The book ends up being much more about Hope making a home in Mulhoney, Wisconsin. She gets involved in the mayoral race between G. T., the diner’s upstanding owner (who was just diagnosed with leukemia), and the corrupt incumbent. She falls for Braverman, the cute line cook. She waitresses the hell out of the Welcome Stairways diner.

That was my favorite part of the book (well, that and the food — can Addie come run a diner in my town?): Hope loves waitressing. She takes such pride in her work, in a way that I don’t see enough in YA fiction. As she’s flying around the diner, wiping up spills, entertaining babies, and filling coffee, Hope muses:

You know what I like most about waitressing? When I’m doing it, I’m not thinking that much about myself. I’m thinking about other people. I’m learning again and again what it takes to make a difference in people’s lives.

YES. That is exactly what’s wonderful about busy jobs: they take your mind off your troubles. That’s a thing I didn’t figure out until college, and I wish I’d learned it sooner.

The political stuff drags in places, and the villain and good guy are clear-cut in a way they rarely are in life. I also wanted to learn more about Addie: why did she move so much? What makes her tick, besides cooking? She’s a very closed figure, and she and Hope seem less close than you’d expect from their history.

But I loved Hope. She’s tough — she’s had to be — but she’s not bitter about it. She’s angry at Deena, but not broken. Braverman, G. T., and some of the other secondary characters are charming in that small-town-novel way. And I got a kick out of the teenagers holding a vigil outside Town Hall in the “mind-numbing cold,” “demand[ing] to live in a town that is not governed by lies and deceit.” Rock on, Wisconsin! (That link goes to pictures of Wisconsinites sleeping outside the Capitol during the protests for collective bargaining rights this winter.)

Fair warning: this book is a big damn tearjerker. I’m an emotional raw nerve these days anyway, but the last chapter had me bawling on my way to work this morning. If you need some catharsis around home or loss or finding your place in the world, this might be your book.

Also reviewed by: Word Bird and Coffee and Cliffhangers

I really wanted to love this book. Someone (I forget who) recommended it to me as similar to my beloved H. M. Hoover. (The link is to an older review of Hoover’s work by Dani Zweig.) I see where that person was coming from, and I think if I’d read this at the same age I first encountered Hoover, I might have loved it as much.

As an adult, though, it grated. Academy 7 features clunky exposition, limited character development, and overly simplistic politics. (There is a gesture near the end towards saying something slightly more challenging. The Alliance golden boy who leaves to play an insufferably self-righteous Che Guevara to the impoverished citizens of a monarchy sees his rebellion get out of control in exactly the way he should have expected if he weren’t so naive; it could have been powerfully tragic if it weren’t presented more as “how dare those uppity peasants stab his gift of leadership in the back.”)

The romance is sweet; Aerin and Dane’s relationship was my favorite part of the book. But much of the plot feels like an excuse to set up the romance, rather than the romance naturally growing from the characters and their story. It hits all its YA fantasy/sci-fi romance marks: the school punishment that throws the unlikely couple together, the tough girl who is suddenly beautiful when she puts on a fancy dress for a party, the tortured characters who are forced to reveal their innermost pain to each other so they can be healed. (Damn, if only healing emotional pain were as easy as telling the right person about it once!)

Ultimately, I think the kids who like this type of book are just as used to more complex fare as I am at this point. (Three cheers for the wealth of YA lit I didn’t have 20 years ago!) Reasonably entertaining, but a disappointment.

BTW, what’s going on with the cover? This is effectively a military academy; they wear uniforms, not Ren Faire henleys. And Aerin would never wear big dangly earrings like that — they’d get in the way of kicking Dane’s ass in combat class.

Also reviewed by: Phoebe North, Bookshelves of Doom, and Karin’s Book Nook

Meanwhile, at the fortress… rabbits are sentient. Their leaders are laying down martial law — a response to the recent mysterious disappearances of whole families in the middle of the night. After running afoul of some soldiers, studious Quentin is drafted and his friend Zack pulls guard duty. They are to report the next day, and they’re terrified… so when their friend Frank’s family disappears, they all decide to escape. The plan: find the rebels who live in the woods.

Isaac’s plot and the rabbit disappearances are connected, of course, and I bet you can figure out how.

This book was a little slow to get going, but it has stayed with me. Though I’m still not entirely sure what I think about it.

The comparisons to Animal Farm are inevitable, so I kept looking for this to be an allegory to our post-9/11 political situation. The rabbits are terrified, so they let their government infringe on their civil liberties. The foxes… well, I don’t know how the foxes fit in. And none of it held together for me as a post-9/11 allegory after I got to the end, which let everyone off the hook far too easily.

Was it “supposed” to be an allegory? I’m not sure how I could read it as anything else, given the long tradition anthropomorphized animal tales have of being just that. Should it be read as “just” a metaphor for human political and moral failings? The laws of the world don’t always hold together, which leans me more toward metaphor and away from fantasy. Is it aimed at middle schoolers (as most of the reviews I found seem to think)? The tone of the book seemed more mature, spare… allegorical. I think this would be a tough sell for my middle schoolers to read on their own, though they get a lot out of Animal Farm when they read it in class. I can see this being a good assigned read.

Like I said, I’m still not sure. Maybe you’ll read it and tell me what you think?

Also reviewed by: Book Dweeb, Mother-Daughter Book Club, and Kyle from Mr. Thacher’s class (for a middle school perspective)

This is clearly meant to evoke the first post-9/11 years, after we’d gone to war, though the setting is never made explicit. Matt’s teacher and her chief bully are so drastically opposed to peace as to approach caricature. The anti-peace “patriots” in town vandalize houses of worship that promote peace vigils, that sort of thing. The teacher Matt calls “Mr. Warhead” assigns papers like, “The Role of Our Great Nation in the Middle Eastern Theater” — with points taken off for “wrong” answers, of course.

Two-dimensionality of villains aside, I enjoyed this. Matt’s growth arc is painful and believable. Sam and Jessica aren’t perfect, but they are determined to do right by their difficult children. It’s a lovely exploration of the Quaker faith and how it comes to fill a hole in Matt that she didn’t want to believe she had.

Also reviewed by: Boys Blogging Books (including an interview with the author), J. M. Prince, and Whirl of Thoughts.

Reggie has big dreams for his school, but Clarke Junior School isn’t stepping up. His classmates are more interested in helping themselves than helping each other, and besides, nobody listens to Reggie anyway after an unfortunate incident on the first day of school left him with the nickname “Pukey.” With help from his best friends, Ruthie and Joe C., and the residents of a local homeless shelter where his youth group volunteers, Reggie sets out to change Clarke and change himself. Ideally without any more puking.

I fell in love with this book on page 4, when Ruthie prefaces her current events report in class thusly:

“Because of the American media’s obvious bias, I used seventeen different global news sources — including the Madagascar Weekly — to put my report together.”

Ruthie is my hero. As is Reggie, as is Olugbemisola R-P for writing this fantastic book. These are hilarious, brave, real kids who I miss since I finished their story. This book manages to be an honest, well-rounded friendship story, family story, political story, and coming-of-age. It even discusses religion without being preachy or about disillusionment. Reggie is never in danger of losing his faith, but he’s always considering what it means. None of the spheres of Reggie’s life are neglected or one-dimensional — a pretty stunning feat for such a zippy book.

Not only that, it stars recognizably urban kids with urban kid problems (including money) who will be relatable for well-off suburban kids. (At least, so I suspect — I’ll let you know after I start pushing this on my own well-off suburban kids.) Finding a book whose appeal straddles those worlds is so rare.

Also reviewed by: The Book Smugglers, Reading in Color, and Steph Su Reads (who disagreed with me about the book being “zippy”). And here’s an interview with the author at Mitali’s Fire Escape.

You can probably see both sides of this: on the one hand, the library needs to stay open so kids can use it! What’s wrong with those unions who want to close a library? On the other hand, this encourages people to get used to the idea that “librarian” is a job that can be done by anyone, with no training.

This bit was the kicker for me:

[P]arents had been upset this summer, believing the elimination of the librarian positions would mean the school libraries would close. When parents heard the libraries would be kept open to students, they calmed down.

They shouldn’t calm down. Who’s maintaining those libraries? Who decides what to buy and what to weed? Who knows the collection and knows the kids and matches them up? Who fights for research and information literacy skills to be part of the curriculum, and who teaches that curriculum? (It’s now “part of the language arts curriculum,” apparently, and I don’t know, but I worry that doesn’t involve much more than “here’s how to find a book on the shelf.”)

I commend these volunteers for wanting to keep the libraries open for their kids, and for being willing to pitch in their time to do it. But a library staffed only by untrained volunteers is only half a library, and the parents of Bridgewater and Raynham (and all the other towns in this country that are in the same situation) shouldn’t accept that.

(Thanks to my colleague Arianna of Wandering Librarians for the story.)

This book isn’t so much a story as it is a daydream, a sketched-out version of the country’s trajectory that ends in hope rather than in Fahrenheit 451. I’ll give you the highs and lows of Levithan’s timeline, because it was my li’l optimist / sci-fi nerd heart’s favorite part of the book:

“It all started, I guess, with 9/11, decades before I was born….” Which led to the Reign of Fear. The Debt, Deficit, and Fuel Depression (aka the Greater Depression). The War to End All Wars. And then, as the tide turned, the Prada Riots. The Worldwide Health Care movement. “The rise of the green states. The Jesus Revolution. The All Equal Movement. Stein’s idea of the Great Community. And now the election.”

Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Don’t you want to read a whole huge near-future novel detailing all of these events? I totally do (memo to David Levithan! Or maybe J. Michael Straczynski), but that’s not this book. There’s plenty of relationship negotiation, which Levithan is very good at, but I’ve read plenty of that. (With the caveat that 98% of the time, of course, I’ve read it about straight people. Levithan writes gay relationships without making a big deal about them being Gay! Relationships!, and it’s awesome.) There’s plenty of friendship love; ditto.

So what this book is really about is inspiration. Levithan posted an essay on the fabulous website YA for Obama in which he talks about writing Wide Awake as a response to Bush’s reelection. He says he wrote Stein as an “ideal candidate,” and therefore had to figure out what his ideal was. Turns out his ideal is pretty similar to mine, the sort of person who brings everyone together in a common goal — a Great Community, as it were. The sort of person who says “all Americans” and means all Americans:

The Jesus Freaks and the gay kids. The old soldiers and the students who couldn’t drive yet. Lovers and friends and exes and couples and female fathers. Every skin, every mix, every religion. People from Kansas and people from far beyond Kansas.

Our world now isn’t quite the same as Levithan envisioned 40 or 50 years from now. (Can we get some “rise of the green states” and “Worldwide Health Care movement” up in here?) But I feel like we had a little bit of this today. Obama’s election, for me, was about the very definition of grassroots: ordinary people believing in something, in someone, and overcoming apathy to give that person, that vision, some power.

I’m still sniffly and emotional, so I’ll leave you with the last words of Wide Awake to describe how I felt, sitting in a room with my students, watching Obama take the oath of office:

I was there. Just one young gay Jew in a sea of people. Just one lone voice in an enormous body of sound. Just one unique person at one unique moment, there to witness something monumental.
I was a part of history.
We are all a part of history.

If you read the book too, tell me what you thought! If you didn’t read it, tell me what you think anyway, about where the country’s going and where it should be going! Tell me what you’re going to do to get it there! Today was a good start, but now we’ve got a country to change, and it starts with us — with our voices and our actions.

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“I can’t believe there’s going to be a gay Jewish president.”
As my mother said this, she looked at my father, who was still staring at the screen. They were shocked, barely comprehending.
Me?
I sat there and beamed.

Lest you think only the usual liberal suspects get to join in the President Stein glee, the book continues, “I think it was the Jesus Freaks who were the happiest the next day at school.” I just read the first couple of pages as I was cataloging it, and by the end of page 3 I was sniffling (and also totally caught up in the story, and the near-future world).

So: it’s a fast read, and we have a couple of weeks before Jan. 20. Buy the book from your favorite independent bookstore or check it out of your library and get readin’! Bloggers, get your readers involved, too! On the 21st we’ll plaster the internet with our reviews and comments.

Conservatives, Republicans, non-Obama supporters: please join in! This is a book about faith and love and standing up for what you believe in, and I think we can all relate to that. I want to hear everyone’s thoughts, not just people who agree with me.

Comment here