I’m leading a book club at school this trimester (focusing mainly on making book trailers or some other project), and two of the girls chose this book to read. So I had to read it, too. (The 6th graders chose the Clique prequel, which is sitting on my nightstand now. Pity me.) This review has spoilers, because frankly there’s nothing surprising enough (except the identity of the texter, maybe) to warrant the maintenance of suspense.

I will admit that it was more interesting than I anticipated. The “mysterious texter directing her every move” bit was a new angle to the generic high school tale of popularity’s rise and fall. The moral is more or less the same as usual — “Old, true friends are the best; be true to yourself” — but things are a bit more complicated for Cammy. Her life was too safe; she did need to shake things up, and it was fun to watch her do so. I also liked that she did not end up with the boy in the end. She did some crappy things, and it would have been unrealistic for Luke to still want her after all that. (It reminded me of Vintage Veronica in that way.)

Interestingly, this book was written by vote — the author posted the first four chapters on her publisher’s site, and then readers voted on each successive plot twist. I’m sorry I didn’t get to watch that process unfold. There’s some sloppiness (at one point Cammy walks away from Luke’s house without her bike, but is riding it shortly thereafter; the school is described as having 156 people total and she’s lived there her whole life, yet there are kids she doesn’t know at all in her English class) but also an unusual number of fun quirks and memorable scenes. I’m curious how much the process contributed to these oddities.

Overall, a slightly above-average representative of a boring but popular genre.

Also reviewed by: Class Bookworm

Rules:

Last year we read Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which I think was about as well-received as can be expected for something everyone had to read. This year we want something that won’t feel like a re-tread of that style and those themes.

I spent some time Googling all-school read programs, and it doesn’t seem terribly common after middle school. I was surprised at how few lists and suggestions were already out there. Let’s start a resource the whole internet can use!

Old Shep is, of course, a Dog Death Book, of exactly the sort I couldn’t stand either when I was Wallace’s age. So the premise was promising. Plus a theater production provides the perfect opportunity for the best sort of Gordon Korman wacky hijinks. And overall, I was entertained. I particularly enjoyed Wallace’s teammate Rick, whose trademark is combining expressions: “You’re going to be on detention until the cows freeze over.” (Is there a word for this, like spoonerism?)

Unfortunately, just like in Schooled, Korman decides to let many of the characters narrate in alternating chapters. Some of the characters are three-dimensional enough to support this; some (especially Trudi, the central-casting ditz who’s after Wallace) are decidedly not.

When I get a free moment, I want to re-read childhood Korman favorites Son of Interflux and I Want to Go Home! to see if they’re still as hilarious as I thought at the time. It’s possible I’ve just outgrown the guy.

Also reviewed by: The Reading Zone and Spill

I didn’t love it like I loved Jellicoe Road, nor did it bug me like Finnikin of the Rock did. It’s a less complex book than either one, which suited me just fine.

At first I thought it was going to be a book about Frankie convincing her parents to let her go back to her old school, Stella’s, or growing in strength in the painful anti-feminist environment of St. Sebastian’s. But it turns out that her mother was right, she was being stifled by the Stella girls, and she actually blossoms at St. Seb’s. It’s fairly rare in YA that the parents turn out to be right about issues of personal growth, and I found it refreshing.

My favorite part of the book is Francesca’s growing relationship with the boys of St. Seb’s. In late high school I hung out with a lot of boys in exactly this way: we didn’t have deep-and-meaningfuls or see each other on the weekends, but we spent long hours shooting the shit during free periods. These relationships provided drama-free companionship, as well as the all-important honing of my crude joke and insult skills, which serve me well to this day.

I’m making this book sound lighter than it is. Frankie’s mom’s depression is serious and scary and not handled lightly at all, and it pushed the hell out of my buttons. I hope this is not too personal, but this story perfectly gets at one of the reasons I don’t want kids. Frankie writes about depression as the potential for illness lurking inside her, and as happy as I am most of the time, it’s inside me, too. There are days — once a year or less, but still — when I curl up into a catatonic ball, and if I had kids and a co-parent relying on me? That’s scary and not okay. I appreciated seeing depression dealt with in a way that isn’t neatly resolved.

Also reviewed by: author Maggie Stiefvater at YA Reads (Maggie overemphasizes the angst, so I figure that compensates for my overemphasis of the lightness); Misrule: The Home of Australian Children’s Books Online; and Not Enough Bookshelves, which sets up a fascinating UK/US Cover War.

(Neither are the cover I had. I think I like the UK cover better than the one I read, and I definitely like it better than the US cover, which is too cute and flip. This is the sort of “slice of life” book that benefits, I think, from the dreaded “photograph of a pretty white girl” cover. Many of my students gravitate to those covers above all else, because they tend to signify “realistic fiction with some humor and romance and school drama” — all of which does indeed describe Francesca. It has so much going on that no one cover will “cover” everything, but the UK cover would at least draw in the sort of readers who will like it.)

In case their post is a little confusing for you (it was for me at first), basically the deal is this:

1. Go to Powell’s, go to Wishlist, and type “guyslitwire@gmail.com” as the email address.
2. Buy some books for one (or both) of the schools!
3. Get the address of the school librarian from the Guys Lit Wire post, and enter it as the shipping address.
4. Email Guys Lit Wire to let them know what you bought.

(I hooked up Ojo Encino Day School in New Mexico with some Sherman Alexie and Scott McCloud.)

This project, by the way, is part of the larger endevour called Operation Teen Book Drop, in its third awesome year.

Nine months after effectively banning most fund-raising food sales in city schools, a city panel will vote Wednesday on an amended regulation that will allow student groups to sell items like Pop-Tarts and Doritos during the school day, but not brownies, zucchini bread or anything else homemade.

Ostensibly this is about “health”: they have a whole list of proposed regulations about percentage of calories from fat and allowable ingredients. It could also be about allergies. (My theory, based on the sort of things I’ve heard people say at my school, is that it’s at least partly about sanitation: who knows what could be going on at those other parents’ houses? At least if it’s pre-packaged I know it’s safe!)

Shall we count the things that piss me off here? “Childhood obesity” is a bogus bogeyman. Let’s teach our kids to make healthy choices about their diets rather than micromanaging everything. A list of ingredients and a portion size doesn’t make something healthy — in fact, I would argue that, whatever the fat content, brownies made from scratch are healthier than Pop-Tarts because they’re made out of actual food ingredients pronounceable by human beings. Baking together at home is an educational family bonding activity; stopping by Costco is not so much. And for crying out loud, can schools stop [insert gross metaphor here that I won't use because this is a family site] huge corporations already?

That’s five things, and I didn’t even include my made-up sanitation theory!

2. From Wired: How to Raise Racist Kids.

Step One: Don’t talk about race. Don’t point out skin color. Be “color blind.”

Step Two: Actually, that’s it. There is no Step Two.

Or at least, so says the authors of a recent book researching how kids think about race.

3. And back to food… The Anti-Fridge

While the wall-mounted “anti-fridges” are pretty cool, I’m not sure they’re so practical for large quantities. My current eating lifestyle involves very little refrigeration in production or transportation, but lots in my home. Turns out you have to chill a lot of produce if you a) live in New England, b) don’t buy produce except from the farmer’s market, and c) want to eat something other than root veggies all winter. But it does concern me to be so dependent on refrigeration… clearly I’ve found my next Crazy Hippie Food Project!

The best thing about this link, though, is that it introduced me to You Are What You Eat by Mark Menjivar, “a series of portraits made by examining the interiors of refrigerators in homes across the United States.” It’s not quite as amazing as Material World: A Global Family Portrait, but darn close.

(Thanks for the links, Martini-Corona!)

One signed just “a thought”:

Also, books (or any other printed material) cannot be changed by any means without completely destroying them, while e-books can be corrupted anytime … like the time Amazon pulled books from the Kindle, or have we forgotten that already?

It’s so important to remember how malleable and insecure digital information is. Particularly when the information the library “owns” is hosted elsewhere (as with a database), the company can raise prices or discontinue access or shut down entirely — it’s not at all the same as owning the material outright. This isn’t a reason not to use electronic sources, of course, but it has to be a factor in the decision.

From “Jessica, Student,” on what students need:

Excellent physical books to get stuck into and electronic access that makes both broad and precise research feasible.

I couldn’t agree more.

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I’m going to be vague about plot, because it’s nearly impossible to explain without giving things away. It’s a school story, a friendship story, and a family story, and that’s all I’ll say about that. (It also manages to hit several of my story kinks at once: Everything She Thought She Knew Was a Lie and epic connections between family members across time and chosen family. Plus, of course, Australia. Ooooh.)

I will say it took me a long time to get into it, longer than I would normally give a book, but I stuck with it because it came so highly recommended. There’s a long stretch where you will have not the foggiest clue what the hell is going on. “The Brigadier”? “The Hermit”? Doesn’t anyone have a bloody name in this book?

Power through that, though; it’s worth it. Even the stupid school territory battle, a convention I normally hate (I can never understand why kids in books take that sort of thing so seriously), comes clear in the end. It’s a beautifully put together gem of a book that would, I think, work packaged for adults as well. (If you are an adult who doesn’t normally read YA, let me know what you think.)

Question: Did you play some sort of Very Serious Game when you were in school, or did you know people who did? Something to do with territory wars, or hazing, or anything like that, where there were leaders and complicated rules that everyone took as gospel? And if so, can you explain to me why on earth you cared? Is it a British (and, I guess, Australian) thing?

Also reviewed at: Chicklish, The LibrariYAn, and YAnnabe.

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It helped me understand the writing decisions my international students make: writing good English is different than writing good Chinese or Korean or Spanish, and not just because the words and grammar are different. We are a different culture and we demand a different experience from our writing: “Clarity, Simplicity, Brevity, and Humanity.”

Native speakers could stand to learn this as well. We can get just as strangled by our pompous multi-syllabic words, just as bogged down in trying to sound important rather than trying to sound clear.

My students are high school students, not journalism students. Some of the writing expectations are different, yes. But if they could all learn “Simple is good” and “One thought per sentence,” the caliber of writing at my school (already pretty high) would shoot through the roof.

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