I put “review” in quotes above because I already knew what I thought of this book before I read it. Except that I hated it even more than that. Here is a representative excerpt:

An itchy wool peacoat of sadness hung over Massie’s entire body, weighing her down with despair. She’d ditched her parents, Paris, and Chanel shopping for this? Not even one compliment on her fetching outfit/chignon/makeup/charm bracelet/brooches/or ability to pull off mixed metals had come her way. Nawt one!

Yup, I read 175 pages of that. Sober. Who’s librarian of the year now?

Here’s the best part: in this book, the characters are in fourth grade. That means they’re 9 or 10, and spending all their time worrying about popularity, designer clothes, having “friends” who will make them look good, and their freaking weight. There is one scene in which a character meets some boys who teach her to burp words, but I think that’s the only time anybody acts authentically like a fourth grader. Most of their parents set them free at an adult New Year’s party, and the only set of parents who are upset about their daughter’s behavior “punish” her by sending her to boarding school (where she will meet the rest of the characters and become even more morally bankrupt).

I don’t want to sound like the sort of bunhead shusher who thinks that all books should have Redeeming Social Value. I do understand why girls think these books are fun: they’re wish fulfillment and escapist fluff. We all need that every so often, and most kids are smart enough to recognize, at least consciously, that there’s more to life than the way Massie lives it. But if you read a steady enough diet of anything, it can’t help but seep into your subconscious, especially for kids as young as 4th-6th grade. (I grew up on a pretty steady diet of stories about True Love, and that’s another whole post, at least.) And that worries me for my impressionable young ladies, particularly the ones for whom this sort of life is possible and they have to actively choose otherwise.

This is a weird, amazing, amazingly weird book. The clearest analog I have is Lost. If you loved Lost (never mind the ending), you will probably love this. It’ll probably get classified as middle grade, but there’s a body count, and we aren’t distanced from it (though it’s certainly not on the level of, say, Hunger Games). But mostly it’s just plain creepy, in that way that things can get when kids who don’t have enough context or understanding end up in charge of making very serious decisions for a society.

The ending (while better than Lost’s) doesn’t entirely hold together, I think. Don’t try to fit it together too precisely. But it works well enough, with some wonderful “Ohhh, that’s what that was about!” moments. The world-building — from overall mood to inventive detail — are incredible enough to make up for any, “Wait, but why didn’t they-”s.

It’ll be a love it or hate it book for most kids (this one hated it, on Aaron Starmer’s blog), I think. I predict it’ll be a tough one to find a home for. This is definitely not a book for kids who look for the straightforward or linear, and that is most of them in the 10-14 range that I think is the target audience. But the kids who love Lord of the Flies, or the timeslip parts of When You Reach Me — get those kids to give it a try.

Also reviewed by: Charlotte’s Library, Librarian in the Middle, and Snarky and Sweet.

Andi adores basketball, and is devastated to learn that her new London school has no girls’ basketball team. Meanwhile, in a small village in the Philippines, her older half-brother Bernardo’s neighbors believe he is the reincarnation of mythological town savior Bernardo Carpio. Like the legendary giant, Bernardo is tall — like, all his clothes made special, can’t buy shoes, dunks the basketball without jumping tall. And the town believes that, like the giant, Bernardo protects them from the earthquakes that regularly wreak havoc in the country.

Bernardo and Andi’s mother has been waiting 16 years for the British government to allow her to bring Bernardo to live with them. Now that day has finally come. Everyone is thrilled that the family will reunite, but how will Andi get along with the brother she doesn’t know? How will Nardo fit in with a new country, a new language, and a new family? And without their giant protector, will the earthquakes return to San Andres?

This was a bit of a slow start, but it grew on me. Told in alternating chapters by the two teens, Andi’s story is a fairly “typical teen” growth arc — proving herself as a basketball player, getting over her resentment of her new “dorky” brother. I found Nardo’s story more engaging from the beginning. Nardo’s conflict between his responsibility as village “savior” and his desire to be with his mom was compelling. I also liked the window into San Andres with its small-community quirkiness. The San Andres cast are much more memorable characters than Andi’s new basketball buddies. (They were fine, but they can’t compete with a witch named Mad Nena and a short Filipino kid who goes by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.)

I loved hearing the siblings’ stories their own ways for the first third of the book, and then seeing them through each other’s eyes. Bernardo thinks Andi is a boy at first, and Andi is unimpressed by Bernardo’s beloved suit (handmade by the local tailor, who puts Velcro on everything). Their cross-cultural relationship is complex and believable.

Phoebe North wrote a timely (as far as I was concerned) post recently about the appeal of magical realism to teens. As you might have gathered from the whole “giant” bit, there’s more than a little magical realism in this story. Did Bernardo grow into a giant because of a wish made on a wishing stone, or because he has a medical condition? Is he protecting San Andres from earthquakes, or has their absence during his life just been a coincidence? It’s never clear, which places this in the “magical realism” camp for me.

The middle grade readers at whom this book seems most targeted can be quite literal, so I’m not sure how they’ll take the ambiguity. And, as I said, the book is a bit slow. It doesn’t scream “instant kid appeal” to me, but it’s original and intriguing and I’m sure it will appeal very much to certain kids. Allegra of My Library Card Wore Out, my co-judge, is a young teen herself, and agreed with me about the pace:

This book was nominated for the CARNEGIE MEDAL. The Sunday Times voted it one of the 100 Best Summer Titles. The Times voted it the Most Recommended Children’s Book for Christmas. It is a YA book but the reviews are by adults. They read differently. I think that might be why they enjoyed it. Since I am YA, I like books that have something happening, like many teen readers. It was a little too slow for my taste and not enough happened to keep my interest. I have never read a book like it. I like reading faster paced books and if there is nothing interesting in a book I am instantly turned off. I guess this is something I have to work on.

I loved getting her perspective; she’s right that most reviewers and award-givers are adults, and one of my favorite things about the internet is how people of all ages can participate at equal levels.

Also reviewed by: My Library Card Wore Out, Pineapples and Pyjamas (who moved this on to our round in Nerds Heart YA), Charlotte’s Library, and Wondrous Reads.

I found this a tricky book to get a handle on, and I mean that in the best possible way. From the cover and the beginning, I expected fairly straightforward middle grade cyberpunk. And to some extent, that’s what it is: action-packed shoot-outs, a hovercraft scooter held together with duct tape, elderly underworld engineers with a genetically engineered pet, spy hijinks in Unison (which the book calls a “social network,” but it’s really more of a fully immersive virtual reality).

But by the end, things had gotten downright trippy. It ended up reminding me most of an episode of Fringe, or of William Sleator’s The Last Universe. (It felt Sleator-esque overall, which is definitely a compliment.) The close friendship/budding romance between the leads felt a bit shoehorned in, but it’s minor, and otherwise this was a fun mind-bending bit of sci-fi. I can see it appealing to the kids who loved Uglies more for the action and the world creation than for the fantasy-fulfillment of being Pretty.

Also reviewed by: Well… not so many reviews yet, since this comes out in five months. (Don’t worry, I’ll remind you.) So I’ll just link to Andy Marino’s website.

ARC generously provided by the editor, the lovely and talented Noa Wheeler.

Al Capone, my favorite of the two, takes place on Alcatraz in 1935, when guards’ families lived on the island. (I have a bit of a prison thing — any closed society, really — so I was all over this premise. Also my students have been recommending the book to me for years.) Moose has just moved to the island with his father, mother, and sister Natalie. Natalie has an undiagnosed mental disability (she would probably be diagnosed with fairly low-functioning autism today). Their mother, obsessed with curing her, has sent her to every quack she could find. Now they’ve moved to San Francisco so Natalie can attend a school for special-needs kids.

But she doesn’t get in. So Moose’s mother insists that Moose come straight home from school every day on the ferry and take Natalie around the island with him and the handful of other island kids. Moose is initially grumpy about Natalie cramping his style, but the extra interaction does turn out to help both Natalie and Moose.

I made that description mostly about Natalie, but there’s a lot more going on for Moose: the Warden’s daughter Piper, who’s way too much trouble to be as cute as she is. His new friends at school and their regular baseball games. His relationships with his parents. All are handled with humor and sensitivity, and despite the historical setting the whole thing feels like it could have happened yesterday. This is a book that happens to have an autistic character, not an Austism Problem Novel.

Anything But Typical, on the other hand, is definitely a one-trick pony. Jason, the narrator, is far higher functioning than Natalie — he is “mainstreamed” in school, though he finds a lot of challenges there now that he’s denied his one-on-one assistant. His favorite thing in the world is Storyboard, the forum to which he posts his short stories. He strikes up a correspondence with PhoenixBird, which turns into an online friendship. When Jason’s parents surprise him with a trip to a Storyboard convention, he’s terrified of meeting PhoenixBird — will she still be his friend or even his girlfriend, or will she ditch him once she sees how “weird” he is?

It’s not much of a spoiler to say that she reacts with some distance when they meet — the book would be wildly unrealistic if she didn’t. Jason’s life is pretty tough in some ways. He doesn’t understand what people expect of him or how to give it, but he wants to please them; he wants the kind of relationships “neurotypicals” have. The “uplifting” ending has him proud of his unusual mind, but one definitely gets the sense that he’s going to go through that cycle (as we all do, I guess) many times before adulthood.

This is a solid story that provides a good perspective on autism from the inside (with the caveat, of course, that autism varies widely, so no one should take this as The Way the Autistic Mind Works). My favorite part was reading the descriptions of Jason’s inventive stories, somewhere between magical realism and fable. But overall, it didn’t particularly grab me — there just wasn’t enough depth. (On the other hand, gorgeous cover!)

Al Capone also reviewed by: Of Cabbages and Kings, Searching for a Good Read, and Fyrefly’s Book Blog

Anything But also reviewed by: Auntie Sarah, Abby (the) Librarian, and Ms. Yingling

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

This is told in all five alternating voices, which was distracting. I kept having to check which was Brianna and which was Renee. With so many characters and only 120 pages, Koss relies on a certain amount of stereotyping shorthand, especially with the secondary characters.

(Brianna’s parents are scientists, and we get this description:

My parents’ idea of fun was to lug the telescope and microscope out to the godforsaken desert — poke in the dirt all day, peer at the stars at night. It was as if they were at work twenty-four hours a day. …But isn’t it possible to be a scientist by day, then play slide trombone in a Dixie band or drums in a rock band at night? Watch TV? Be in plays?

Why yes! In fact it is! So why not show characters who do that? They’d be far more interesting and believable, and even less stereotypical parents can set up plenty of “don’t have a loud party tonight, Bree” conflict.)

It’s rare to get the Mean Girls’ point of view portrayed sensitively. Which makes sense for the victimized target readership — I think most kids feel victimized at some point in middle school. But as a teacher, even as I hate what the bullies are doing, they’re still 12-year-old girls and my heart goes out to them. They’re behaving that way for a reason, and I wonder if it might help to recognize themselves in a book where they can also see their victims’ perspective?

That’s the type of question this book is designed for. Nothing much “happens”; it’s a psychological case study as much as anything. For all that this is not a richly built world (again, 120 pages), the friendship drama is entirely believable. My kids deal with this crap every day, poor things, and I can imagine this book meaning a lot to a girl who goes to school with cramps in her stomach thinking about how her “friends” will subtly torment her today.

The girls on the cover, incidentally, are all white, which disappoints me since that wasn’t specified at all in the book. (Maya is the daughter of Russian immigrants; the others are given a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds but no clear ethnicities.)

Also reviewed by: Books on the Brain, Reading Nook, and Bookshelves of Doom

As you might imagine, a large public 8th grade doesn’t go so well for a kid who’s never had a haircut or watched TV. It’s tradition for the biggest dork in school to get elected class president, so they can be tormented for the entire year. This year, the honor is Cap’s. But things don’t go quite as the bullies planned…

I was a tremendous Gordon Korman fan as a kid. I Want to Go Home!, Son of Interflux… I read these books over and over and laughed my ass off every time. (Tragically they both appear to be out of print.) Schooled has some of the same brand of elaborately planned wacky hijinks, but the humor doesn’t quite bring it. I didn’t laugh out loud once (well, maybe the occasional snicker). The story is told by a mix of different characters, which was necessary because none of the personalities were strong enough to carry the book. The idea of winning over middle school bullies through nonviolence is intriguing, but the plot arc was fairly predictable. Just meh all the way.

I still plan to read No More Dead Dogs, another recent Korman. Hopefully this was a fluke.

Also reviewed by: A Myriad of Books (whose guest reviewer loved it) and Stories. Read ‘Em. Write ‘Em (who also liked it). Maybe it’s just me, then. It probably wasn’t fair to read this expecting the Korman novels of my youth; I don’t think this was trying for the same level of hilarity.

Richard Peck gave the following cover blurb: “high drama about how language unlocks the world.” Which I think covers it nicely. When you think about it, this is an oddly cerebral book for kids (aimed at 10-14, I’d say?) — the central question with which Annie occupies most of her thoughts is, “How can I get Helen to understand the concept of language?” Not generally the stuff of high drama.

And yet it is (and not just because Annie slaps Helen around a whole lot). It’s a fascinating thing to consider, what language is and how it happens, and Miller makes these questions absolutely accessible. I was less drawn in by Annie’s quixotic attempt to make an emotional connection with Helen, but I’m going to chalk that one up to my almost complete lack of a mothering instinct for small children.

Miller also manages to deal pretty smoothly with 19th-century discipline, which can make for awkward 21st-century reading. As I said, Annie gets awfully physical with Helen — not to hurt her, but to get her under some control. I’m not sure how else anyone, even today, would deal with a wild, spoiled 6-year-old who thought nothing of kicking, biting, and breaking people’s teeth, but it’s uncomfortable to read about in this post-spanking era.

More subtly difficult is the way Annie (who was blind herself) thinks about disability:

Turned in profile, her misshapen eye is hidden from my view. I see only half of her face — the pretty half. I fancy it’s also the bright half, the obedient half. Is this the side of Helen that let me touch her moments ago?

Yeesh. Of course, it makes perfect sense that Annie would have seen things that way, as a product of her time. But it’s by no means a prejudice we’re free of in the 21st century, and this is a subtle enough expression (one of many in the book) of the idea of disability as a sort of “devil’s mark” on an otherwise good child that I hope kids don’t just take it in stride.

Also reviewed by: YA or STFU, Jen Robinson’s Book Page, Becky’s Book Reviews, and Eva’s Book Addiction.

I could probably read Jacqueline Woodson’s shopping list and it would make me sniffly. The touching pathos of the pasta and toilet paper! Seriously, every one of her slim little books is a gem. Nothing much happens here, and yet everything happens. The language is lyrical and entirely authentic to the characters.

I do wonder, though, what kids think? This book uses non-linear storytelling, an ambiguous not-entirely-happy ending… things I love, but which my students always complain about. If you know kids who love this book or any of her others, I’d love to hear about it!

Also reviewed by: The Happy Nappy Bookseller (who also has an interview with Jacqueline Woodson) Regular Rumination, and Becky’s Book Reviews.