Unfortunately, I have this Christmas Curse. Even if nothing bad has happened the rest of the year, the week or two before Christmas is 55% likely to feature the breakup of a serious relationship and/or a health crisis. This seems statistically implausible, but I assure you it is accurate (sample size: 11 post-college Decembers). I realized this year that Christmas is somewhat hopelessly tied to moping about for me, and 2011 sure wasn’t shaping up to buck this trend, so I’m skipping Christmas.

Whoa, what? Christmas is not a holiday one can just skip in this country. The pressure to Celebrate is so great that it’s not avoidable, even if the holiday itself has no real meaning for you or your family. Even people who really don’t observe Christmas at all are visiting their folks, because they get the time off. Restaurants and bars are closed. Volunteer gigs are few and fill up fast, because everybody wants to get a last bit of goodwill in.

But what’s the point of being Jewish if you can’t ignore Christmas with a movie and Chinese food? you ask, and you’re right, but I’ll be doing it alone.*

So I am reaching for the same solace I’ve used on many a lonely Valentine’s Day: gleeful bitterness. I am collecting Terrible Christmas Things. Picture me dressed as the Ghost of Christmas Future, carrying one of Your Neighborhood Librarian’s Advil Calendar cocktails (most of which are the opposite of terrible, but the Crystal Lake Surprise looks promising).

Or dressed as Krampus, which is pretty much the ultimate Terrible Christmas Thing and is therefore my new favorite thing in the world. Christmas should be much more like Halloween.

Cracked’s list of The 11 Most Unintentionally Creepy Christmas Ornaments is pretty quality. Should you be in a gift-giving mood, I’m particularly fond of the screaming larva baby.

And of course there’s Jonathan Coulton’s classic “Chiron Beta Prime,” performed by my favorite ASL singer Stephen Torrance (even if he does misspell “soylent”):

More Terrible Christmas Things tomorrow!

*This is where I feel compelled to add that my family and I love each other very much. My dad even offered to fly here for the day. So I am alone by choice, but given the situation, it’s really best for all concerned.

In the French fairy tale on which this is based, one sister is kind to a fairy/witch/whathaveyou and is blessed to have jewels and flowers drop from her mouth when she speaks. The second sister goes to demand the same blessing, but because of her rudeness is cursed with toads and snakes. In this twist, the snakes and toads are a blessing of a different sort — toads are lucky and snakes are revered as rat-catching symbols of the goddess Naghali. The setting is a fictionalized polytheistic 17th century India, occupied by fictionalized pseudo-Muslims who call themselves Believers.

Tana and her mother Hiral are the only family Diribani has left after her father, Hiral’s second wife, dies. Miracle of miracles, they actually love each other; no wicked stepmother and sister here. Newly impoverished, both sisters want to keep the family together, but the goddess’s blessings make that impossible. Diribani wants to share her gift, but nearly starts a riot during a parade for the visiting prince and is taken to his palace far away for her protection. Tana’s gift is feared by the Believers. The prince orders her and Hiral to live in the temple grove outside the village, where her beasties can quietly slither off to the forest. They are sad to be separated, but it seems for the best.

But of course it’s not that simple. Diribani has a hard time fitting in with her new companions, who are Believers and royalty to boot. The wicked, greedy local governor drives Tana out and wants Diribani and her jewels for himself. And of course both girls fall for men they think they can’t have.

I liked the delicate interplay between the two religions. The Believers are an occupying power, yes, but they are only portrayed as evil at the beginning, while they’re still “the other” — as Diribani gets to know them she comes to appreciate their customs. I also liked Diribani’s and Tana’s separate quests to determine what Naghali intends for them to do with her gifts. Both girls have quite believable crises of faith, but the goddess never really forsakes them. This is an unabashedly religious book in a way that modern readers will relate to, I think, even though the religion is made up. There was also a surprising amount of complex political intrigue; I can see this appealing to fans of Megan Whalen Turner’s The Thief.

None of the characters ever particularly grabbed me, unfortunately. There’s too much “oh woe, I am a plain/useless/lazy girl; my sister is so much better than me” from both sisters, though that improves some once they start traveling and having adventures. The book struck me as a bit overwritten, with a lot of unnecessary explanation of thoughts and feelings that were obvious. But the descriptions were certainly gorgeous, and Allegra and I both loved the fairy tale “twist.” Most importantly, a lot more happens than in Tall Story, and on that basis we thought it would be more appealing to young readers. I had a blast chatting with Allegra about these books, as she is a young teenager herself and therefore very differently qualified than I am to judge kid appeal!

Also reviewed by: My Library Card Wore Out (my co-judge), Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog (who sent it on to our round of Nerds Heart YA), The Book Smugglers, and Forever Young Adult.

What I left out is that the Balanchines don’t deal in drugs; they deal in chocolate. This story takes place in 2083, when chocolate and coffee are criminalized as scapegoats for a failing country. Zevin makes 72 years in the future feel entirely believable — no wild flights of technology, just hints at the post-peak oil decay (rationed food and paper; no production of new clothes so everyone wears hand-me-downs; books pulped to make “essentials” like toilet paper because everyone reads electronically anyway).

This is not post-apocalyptic: there’s been no apocalypse, no moment of disaster. Everyone will probably call it dystopian because that’s the buzzword of the moment, but it’s not: there is no attempt at utopia. There’s just the corruption, crime, and poverty we already have, taken up a few notches — barely perceptible when seen through Anya’s eyes, who is well provided for. There is no overall sense, as in Hunger Games, that this world sucks. This is more like Bumped — a world that seems normal to its teenagers, but more than a little off to us.

Anya is one of my favorite heroines in recent memory. She’s tough, snarky, and pragmatic, above all. She falls in love with Win despite her best resistance; he is the romantic in the relationship. She remains a clear-eyed realist with no illusions that love will conquer all. In a field of dreamy romances, that was unbelievably refreshing.

(Less refreshing is that it is, of course, the start of a series. Can’t anybody write stand-alones anymore? But I’m dying to hang out with Anya, Natty, Leo, and Win again, so I can’t complain too much.)

Zevin’s Elsewhere is one of my long-time fall-backs: I have yet to meet an adolescent girl who didn’t love it. And when they get a little older, they love Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, too. This is offbeat enough that it might not have quite the same universal appeal, but I’m sure many of my students will be huge fans.

Also reviewed by: As These Pages Fly, who also has an interview with the author.

ARC generously provided by the publicist.

This was such a “right book at the right time” for me. The idea of chucking it all for a solitary cross-country journey of self-discovery sounds so awesome right now I can’t even tell you. This is the sort of book that inspires a soundtrack — she’s biking, not sitting on a train or bus, but you can picture the “staring out a window listening to folk rock as the corn fields fly by” montage anyway. I have a pretty much endless appetite for that montage, in movie or book form. It’s so romantically appealing to believe that a geographical journey can inspire and mirror an internal journey, that we can return changed to a changed life.

(I said this to Deborah, and she reminded me of the Dar Williams song “Road Buddy”:

I thought we’d find each story like a snake-skin or an arrowhead
But we only stop at fast food places
They hate their jobs; I understand

So okay, not every road trip leads to great discovery; some just lead to French fries and indigestion. Grand romantic gestures are often a disappointment. I think I’ll take my cross-country train trip anyway.)

I actually think this has a lot to do with the appeal of YA for me in general. Every YA novel is in some sense a coming-of-age, and therefore every one is about a reinvention of the self (if not necessarily a drastic one). Adult books often seem to be looking backward at choices made in the past and trying to incorporate those choices into the current self; YA books deal with making those choices and evolving. I suppose at some point I might feel like I’ve accumulated enough of a past that I relate to characters dealing with theirs, but for now I’m still more interested in what happens next and who I am becoming. (Disclaimer: I read comparatively few “literary” adult novels, so I might be way off base here. I want to explore this idea more as part of the endless debate about “how to define a YA novel,” so please share your thoughts!)

Wow, I got off track there, didn’t I? Oops. (Heh… “off track”? Get it? Trains?) At some point I was reviewing a book… A more review-like criticism: I found the timeline really confusing at first, since everything’s told in “Then” and “Now” flashback/flashforward, but it isn’t clear when “Then” and “Now” are.

I also had to suspend disbelief about Cass’s deep hatred of Heather at the beginning. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t sparing a thought for my junior high tormentors by the summer before my senior year. Dude, we all sucked in 8th grade; move on. Eventually we saw enough flashbacks to make it clear that this was a serious pattern of abuse rather than “just” the teasing all middle school geeks go through, which made it a bit more understandable, but still… it felt like too long for the feelings to still be so intense.

Criticisms aside, though, obviously I loved it. It is part of the recent Will Grayson, Will Grayson/My Most Excellent Year/Suite Scarlett genre of Behind the Scenes of the Offbeat Yet Heartwarming Play. But you know, I’m never going to say that we have too many books about smart kids doing what they’re passionate about. We can never have too many kids doing that, so how could we have too many books about it? If you have recommendations in this genre (that I just invented), I’d love to hear them!

Also reviewed by: Bitch Magazine, Abby (the) Librarian, and Dreaming in Books

I can’t talk about this book — nor can I in good conscience review it — without one spoiler: the nature of the crime. The book is told in alternating chapters, Gittel’s childhood voice leading up to the crime and her seventeen-year-old voice reflecting on it. The two voices don’t work back to specifics until the middle of the book, though it’s a safe guess earlier.

SPOILER
Gittel’s best friend Devory is raped by her older brother. The incident Gittel witnesses is part of a repeated pattern of abuse throughout Devory’s childhood. She’s ultimately unable to handle it and hangs herself in Gittel’s bathroom. It’s an incredibly painful sequence to read, obviously, and anyone who might have issues in this department should definitely be warned.

“Eishes Chayil” means “woman of valor,” and is a pseudonym. The author is a Chassidic woman who took a personal risk speaking out about this sort of abuse, though it’s also very clear that she loves her community. It’s so easy, when writing about someone harmed in a very different culture, to lean heavily on the judgment and imply that no one should live that way. Chayil never takes that road. It’s an important book, both for anyone from within an insular community who might get to read it (it’s a first of its kind, I think), and for its description of the Chassidic world to outsiders. The Amish are a much more familiar closed religious society in American popular culture (not that we have many novels written by Amish women, either). I’m Jewish and still knew almost nothing about this version of Judaism. So it’s important, and very well-written, but I wouldn’t call it enjoyable or an easy read.

*Not, oddly, what to eat (aside from the regular kosher laws). I found it completely fascinating that a community so focused on separating its members from the outside world, whose clothing choices and entertainment and everything ignore the modern world as much as possible, thinks nothing of eating Rice Krispie treats.

The characters also mention psychotherapy, which is apparently acceptable — though since the culture is so firmly “ignore it and it will go away,” I’m not sure how the therapist is supposed to help. The cultural lines were the most interesting part of the book for me, for sure.

Also reviewed by: the wonderfully named Velveteen Rabbi, Frenetic Reader, and Helen’s Book Blog. If you’re interested in some Orthodox Jews’ takes on the book, Hashkafah has a forum on the subject.

This is a fairly light story, compared with, say, the similarly premised Children of Men. There’s never any question that the human race will survive, provided we’re a-ok with lots of teenage pregnancies. The world seems to be rolling on much the same as now, in fact — no post-apocalyptic tendencies at all.

When I say “now,” of course, I mean a United States in which the House of Representatives votes to defund Planned Parenthood, one of the most important providers of contraception and STD testing in the country, especially for lower-income women; a Florida court orders a pregnant woman confined to the hospital against her will; a state Senator thinks it’s totally reasonable to compare pregnant women to pregnant cows and the monetary value thereof. Just to name a few recent news items that pissed me off.

So we’ve got some stuff to talk about in this country, in terms of how we treat women and our wombs, “pre-pregnant” or otherwise. Bumped reads light and entertaining, full of zippy slang like Feed, and much like Feed it also asks the tough questions: Why do we have sex? To whom do our bodies belong? How are sex and love and making babies connected, and what is the impact of disconnecting them? How can people of faith interpret sexuality differently? What are our obligations to society vs. our obligations to ourselves? (Unlike Feed it did not make me want to jump off a bridge.)

My only real complaint about this book is the ending, which struck me as so abrupt I thought I’d missed something. It’s clearly heading for a sequel, which I will happily read, but I think this story would have been better told in a longer single volume. Both girls rushed their realizations at the end to give the book some sort of stopping place; it felt off.

Other than that, though, this is sharp, inventive science fiction that will give teenagers and adults a lot to chew on. I want to start a book club at school just so we can read this book.

(Advance copy received from NetGalley, my favorite new toy. Publication date Apr. 26, 2011.)

Also reviewed by: Presenting Lenore, Forever Young Adult, and Beyond Words.

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.

This article is full of rich ideas to unpack. Here’s a particularly interesting bit:

That girls in the Middle East are consistently at risk of gendered violence implicitly suggests that girls in the “civilized” West are immune to such threats. The education students with whom we work are very familiar and comfortable with the stereotype that the lives of Muslim women are inherently scary, that they cannot work or vote or walk around without the threat of violence. Of course there are Muslim women who live in oppressive or patriarchal regimes (in the Middle East and elsewhere). What we contend is that young adult novels written by white women and marketed and consumed in the West consistently reinforce the idea that Muslim women are inherently oppressed, that they are oppressed in ways that Western women are not, and that this oppression is a function of Islam. By positioning “Eastern” women as the women who are truly oppressed, those in the West pass up a rich opportunity to engage in complex questions about oppression, patriarchy, war, families, displacement, and the role of values (imperialist or faith-based) in these relations.

I also love the discussion questions the authors suggest for teachers using these books in their classrooms. A sample:

• Which parts of the novel are you absolutely certain are true? How do you know? Where did you learn this information? Students can try to pinpoint the resources they rely upon to get their “facts.”
• Who is the author of this story? How do they legitimize themselves as an expert? What might be their motivations? Who are they speaking to and for?
• How is the book marketed and what does it intend to teach Western readers? Students might examine the description on the back of the book, the author’s note, the map, the glossary, and book reviews to make observations about what kinds of readers are being targeted.

These are librarian questions! These are the sort of media literacy questions I encourage my students to ask about every source they work with. Who is giving you this information? Why do you believe it? Why are they a trustworthy source, or not? We don’t discuss these nearly often enough (in school or elsewhere), particular not in relation to fiction.

I’ve seen a lot of this sort of novel (written by white women about Middle Eastern Muslim teen girls), and I’m starting to see more novels written by Western Muslim women about Western Muslim teen girls. But I see almost no books by Muslim women about Middle Eastern Muslim teens, particularly not for the YA market. If you have a recommendation, I’d love to hear it!

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.

On one level, this is a rocking adventure, complete with shark attacks, cannibals, and a duel. On another level, it’s a gorgeously philosophical exploration of religion, science, and colonialism:

“Hah, you fall silent,” said the priest. “You are a good child, the women say, and you do good things, but the difference between the trousermen and the Raiders is that sooner or later the cannibals go away!”
“That’s a terrible thing to say!” said Daphne hotly. “We don’t eat people!”
“There are different ways to eat people, girl, and you are clever, oh yes, clever enough to know it. And sometimes the people don’t realize it’s happened until they hear the belch!”

It has some touches of Pratchett’s trademark nonsense, just enough to keep things light, but this is not a silly book. It is a brilliant book that I’m going to be thinking about for awhile, and you should all go read it so you can think about it with me.

It doesn’t hurt that it speaks to one of my literary kinks. You know I have a thing about fantasies in which people defy their destinies, and this is the ultimate anti-destiny book. Mau’s entire character arc has to do with discovering who he is when he can’t be what the culture of his people expected. He left his boy’s soul behind, but he never had the ceremony to give him a man’s soul. So who is he? His people’s gods and revered Grandfathers are always speaking in his head, ordering him to recreate the Nation as it was. Much of the book is about Mau learning to ignore those voices and think for himself, while still appreciating the value of ritual and tradition.

Read-alikes: Honestly, this reminds me of nothing so much as The Princess Bride. The His Dark Materials trilogy and Kenneth Oppel’s Airborne have a similar feel as well (self-reliant girls bucking society’s expectations; a magical touch of new science), and of course you can’t beat Bloody Jack for 18th century high seas adventure.

Also reviewed at: the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Teen Reads.

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