Sassy Librarian

• Rated 1 stars

“The subject is interesting -- teenage girls who express their intention to abstain from pre-marital sex by wearing purity rings. But the approach is preachy and heavy-handed, with frequent references to scripture. The teenage characters are almost too realistic in their self-absoprtion and the relentless banality of their dialogue ("Oh. My. Gah. Tabs! He is so cute. I didn't know we was so cute! You are so lucky!"). And the pace of the plot is weighed down by needlessly detailed descriptions of the travels between the chorus room, biology class, and the cafeteria. I struggled to get into this book (the cover is absolutely tasteless) and struggled to finish it, doing so only because I promised a library colleague that I would give her my opinion. Teen girls -- especially those wrestling with the issues of religion and sex -- may have an easier time relating to this book, but for me "Pure" was pure drivel.”

Sassy Librarian wrote this review Tuesday, December 30 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“Fourteen-year-old Junior is a “zero” on the Spokane Reservation, “located approximately one million miles north of Important and two billion miles west of Happy.” Born with water on the brain, Junior wears glasses, has seizures, a stutter, and a lisp, and is called “a retard about twice a day.” To escape his isolation, he draws cartoons of himself, his family, and his friends.

A geometry teacher at the reservation school sees a spark in Junior and encourages him to leave and go “where people have hope.” For Junior that place is Reardan, a white high school off the reservation. Using his brains, personality, and jump shot, Junior makes new friends across the teenage social strata from jocks to nerds. But while his new friendships thrive, Junior’s only friend on the reservation becomes his worst enemy and chief rival on the basketball court. As a result, Junior finds that he doesn’t quite fit in at home or at school: “I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other.”

Junior tells his story with humor and brutal honesty, including frank language about racism and teen sexual behavior. Many amusing illustrations extend the text by revealing additional layers of Junior’s personality. The pictures also make the book a quick read and an appealing choice for reluctant readers.

This coming-of-age story offers a unique view of the world from the perspective of poverty and Native Americans. Suburban teens may find it surprising to see their culture through Junior's eyes. Despite the cultural differences, though, all teens will relate to Junior’s pain as an outsider and his struggle to make his own way in the world while trying to maintain ties with family and friends. Teens who identify with Junior may be interested in Give Me My Father’s Body, another book on my shelf that tells the true story of Minik, the New York Eskimo.”

Sassy Librarian wrote this review Wednesday, August 20 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“Dating is tricky business for most people, and it’s no different at the Penderwick house. Oblivious to the attentions of football-playing neighbor Tommy, oldest sister Rosalind is still swooning over her summer crush. Meanwhile, 10-year-old sister Jane pines for Tommy. But worst of all is Aunt Claire’s insistence that the girls’ widowed father start dating. Fearing the arrival of a stepmother, Rosalind, Jane, and their sisters -- 11-year-old Skye and 5-year-old Batty -- devise the Save-Daddy Plan: Keep dad single by finding the worst blind dates possible. Nobody, it seems, has even noticed Iantha, the charming widow next door.

In this sequel to her National Book Award winning The Penderwicks, Jeanne Birdsall delivers another contemporary children’s novel with a nostalgic feel. Responsible Rosalind, fearless Skye, brainy Jane, and animal-loving Batty are clearly drawn and likable, and their soccer-playing, homework-swapping, neighbor-spying adventures are tame but amusing. The only missteps are Jane’s unbelievably sophisticated vocabulary (“Unhand me you minion”) and a soap-opera style prologue depicting the mother’s death.

Despite the family’s dramatically different personalities, everyone gets along. Even the Penderwick’s dog tolerates Iantha’s cat. These characters and situations practically beg for a Disney-style movie treatment along the lines of The Parent Trap.

For an adult reader, such sweetness can be cloying and should be taken in small doses. But the story makes a warm and wholesome reading experience for elementary schoolers (grades 3-6). Sadly, some of them may perceive the harmonious and loving Penderwicks as more fantastical than Harry Potter.
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Sassy Librarian wrote this review Tuesday, August 19 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“In Cassandra’s Sister, author Veronica Bennett imagines the late teenage years and early adulthood of Jane Austen and her older sister Cassandra. The book takes place during the period from 1794 to 1803, when a young woman’s fate was determined by money, marriage, and men.

We first meet Jane as an 18-year-old, known affectionately to her family as Jenny, an energetic and imaginative girl who was “always scribbling stories.” The daughter of a minister, she lives contently in a small English village, but is keenly aware that most of the single men in the district are her own brothers. As a result, she makes a beeline for new young men with whom she dances at occasional public balls, and is crushed when their attentions turn toward prettier or wealthier girls.

As young Jenny matures into Jane, we witness the parallels between her dreams and disappointments and those of the characters she created in Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey, the three novels she writes during the span of the book.

Essentially a fictionalized biography, the book is fairly short on plot and relies instead on characters and relationships, especially those of the feisty, conflicted Jane and the more polished, even-tempered Cassandra. Weighed down by numerous imagined conversations between the two, the pace of the story is sometimes slow. But many historical details convey an authentic (if somewhat depressing for women) sense of time and place.

An unnecessary prologue, in which a distant relative by marriage is beheaded in France, isn't well integrated into the story but is written with an energy and momentum lacking in the rest of the book.

With its sophisticated, somewhat esoteric vocabulary (soporific, chilblains, superfluity, bonhomie) and assumed knowledge of Austen’s works, the book will have limited appeal for the average teen reader. But Austen fans, historical fiction buffs, and those who enjoyed the film Becoming Jane might enjoy getting to know Cassandra’s Sister.”

Sassy Librarian wrote this review Wednesday, August 13 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 2 stars

“When this biography of Harper Lee arrived in my shipment of new books this spring, I couldn’t wait to read it. Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird was one of my favorite books as a teenager, and I have enjoyed watching the film many times. As a result, my expectations of this book may have been unrealistically high.

I Am Scout is an adaptation (for younger readers) of Charles Shields’s adult biography, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. The youth edition contains fascinating glimpses into the life of the notoriously reclusive Lee. Considered a bully as a child, Lee bonded with frail neighbor Truman Capote, who described the pair as “apart people.” Lee’s separateness from her peers continued in high school and college, where her swearing, pipe smoking, and aversion to fashion made her social poison. Yet her just-folks, down-home demeanor helped open doors when she and Capote traveled to Kansas in December 1959 to investigate the murders described in Capote’s blockbuster In Cold Blood.

Teen readers will relate to Lee’s independence, rebellion against social conventions, and competitive friendship with Capote. But they may struggle with some unexplained references to people and places of decades past, such as Shields’s description of producer Alan Pakula as “dressed like a 1960s IBM salesman.”

In addition, sloppy editing – including numerous typos, inconsistencies, and gaps – suggest that Shields’s adaptation was a rush job. For example, throughout the book’s first 50 pages, Shields refers to his subject as Nelle Lee. Only on page 51 is she introduced as Nelle Harper Lee, but with no explanation of the source for the middle name by which she became known around the world.

Shields relies without skepticism on Capote as a frequent source, despite acknowledging that “he was prone to telling lies.” Toward the end of the book, Shields refers to an infamous 1978 appearance by Capote on the Stanley Siegel television show in New York City, but incorrectly describes the forum as a radio program.

The book even delivers a slight to Brock Peters, the African American actor who portrayed Tom Robinson in the film. Shields includes several anecdotes about Peters, including a moving story about him promoting racial tolerance on the set. Yet while photographs of the film’s white producer, star, and child actors appear in the book, no images of Peters (or any other African American for that matter) are included, an ironic oversight indeed in the biography of an author whose book has been a symbol of civil rights for nearly 50 years.

Teen readers interested in the basic facts of Lee’s life will find value here, but they may not be satisfied by the reading experience.”

Sassy Librarian wrote this review Monday, August 4 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“On a trip to Maine this summer, I visited the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum on the campus of Bowdoin College. The museum’s presentation of Peary’s exploits in pursuit of the North Pole reminded me of this book in my school library collection.

While the museum burnishes the reputation Peary so avidly sought – daring, heroic explorer – Give Me My Father’s Body presents a far different picture – ruthless, racist egomaniac. But Peary is hardly the central character of the book, which tells the heartbreaking story of Minik, a 7-year-old who was one of six Eskimos taken by Peary from Greenland to New York City in September 1897. By May 1898, four of the Eskimos, including Minik’s father, were dead from tuberculosis and one had returned to Greenland with African American explorer and Peary assistant Matthew Henson. Peary, who believed the Eskimos were an inferior race, took no further interest in their fate.

The now-orphaned Minik was placed in the care of William Wallace, a superintendent of buildings at the American Museum of Natural History. Although Wallace and his family genuinely cared for Minik, Wallace subsidized his upstate New York dairy farms by embezzling from the museum. When his financial misdeeds came to light, Wallace was fired and the family became “virtually destitute.”

At the same time, Minik learned that his father’s bones were on display at the museum and that the funeral he thought he had witnessed was a sham staged by museum scientists “for the benefit of little Minik.”

Minik struggled for years to recover his father’s remains and belongings from the museum, which rebuffed him at every turn. Frustrated, Minik eventually returned to Greenland, but struggled to fit in there after years away from his language and culture: “I still have the impression that it would have been better for me had I never been brought to civilization and educated. It leaves me nowhere between two extremes, where it would seem that I can get nowhere.”

Although Harper’s writing style is somewhat flat and dry, the events of the book are sufficiently dramatic and touching to keep readers engaged. The book is thoroughly researched and contains abundant end notes providing detailed source information. The paperback edition includes an epilogue (in which it is revealed that the museum eventually returned the remains to Greenland in 1993), an author interview, and an appendix of people, place names, and common words along with variant spellings.

This story of cultural and geographic imperialism will appeal to (and may surprise some) teens interested in history.”

Sassy Librarian wrote this review Sunday, August 10 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 2 stars

“Because a branch of my family tree passes through Lowell, MA, a center for textile production during the 19th century, I was intrigued by the colorful treatment of a potentially dreary subject. The book describes the working conditions in Victorian-era mills in Manchester, England, where children aged 9-13 were permitted to work nine hours a day and earned about $20 a week in today’s dollars.

Although the book attempts to follow the journey of an 11-year-old boy through the mills, the story isn’t particularly compelling in that it focuses more on the machinery than on the people. The humorous cartoon-style illustrations (in which all of the adults look alike) are inconsistent with the gravity of the subject matter, but they may attract reluctant readers.

The book could have been more interesting if there had been a strong central character – perhaps an actual 11-year-old whose story could have been followed and supported with historical facts and period photos or artifacts.

Also diminishing the book’s effectiveness is its odd layout. Page 1 presents an out-of-context cost-of-living list of common items cross-referenced to page 13, which shows typical wages. The list should have been better incorporated into the text; its placement seems like an after-thought.”

Sassy Librarian wrote this review Thursday, July 17 2008. ( reply | permalink )

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• Rated 4 stars

“In Rumors, fans of Luxe can pick up right where they left off: immediately after the “watery end” of socialite Elizabeth Holland. The book opens in the “snowy hills forty miles northwest of Manhattan” on New Year’s Eve 1899 with repentant cad Henry Schoonmaker waiting for his bride to walk down the aisle. But who is that bride?

Just as she did in Luxe, author Anna Godbersen transports readers several weeks back to trace the events leading up to the milestone event. As Christmas approaches, Gilded Age New Yorkers continue to speculate about Elizabeth’s fate. Her sister Diana, still pining for Henry, spends afternoons “in the company of wealthy and detestable bachelors” in order to salvage the family’s finances, but uses information from those encounters to sell juicy tidbits to a newspaper columnist. Elizabeth’s former ladies maid Lina masquerades as a “copper-smelting heiress from out West,” while continuing to supply Elizabeth’s archenemy Penelope with information that will help them both secure the social and romantic connections they crave.

Although the pace of Rumors is somewhat slower than that of Luxe, it is packed with surprises and scandals from beginning to end and leaves readers poised for further twists in the next installment.”

Sassy Librarian wrote this review Thursday, July 17 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

““When you noticed little things, the world could sometimes be a nasty place.” Unfortunately for 13-year-old Sherlock Holmes buff Ingrid Levin-Hill, noticing little things is a hard habit to break, and the things she notices place Ingrid smack in the middle of a murder mystery in her small town of Echo Falls.

Fearing that she will be a suspect because she accidentally left her distinctive red soccer cleats at the home of the victim, Ingrid sneaks into the crime scene and nearly comes toe-to-toe with the killer, who’s trying to recover some incriminating evidence of his own. But because she’s hiding under the bed, Ingrid glimpses only his shoes and must scour the town to find the killer and exonerate two wrongly imprisoned suspects – all while pulling up her math grades, starting a new romance with the son of the police chief, and starring in a community theater production of “Alice in Wonderland.”

Ingrid is an unusually smart teen character with a good sense of humor, but she retains the qualities of a typical 8th grader – self conscious, worried about school, and fighting with her brother. Rooting for Ingrid amid building suspense (especially in the final chapters), teen readers may find it impossible to put down Down the Rabbit Hole.
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Sassy Librarian wrote this review Thursday, July 17 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 2 stars

“The Miracle Detective purports to be “an investigation of holy visions.” Although the book contains some information on Lourdes, Fatima, and other past miraculous claims, the bulk of the text is devoted to Medjugorje, the town in Bosnia-Herzegovina where six young people, ages 10-16, began seeing daily apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 1981. Author Randall Sullivan, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, begins the book in a brisk reportorial style reminiscent of Jonathan Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. Like Krakauer, Sullivan inserts himself into the narrative. He travels to Medjugorje and spends seven weeks there during the Bosnian War. Ironically, it’s in Medjugorje that Sullivan’s book stumbles. Sullivan abandons his reportorial objectivity, eventually replacing it with a giddy credulity in unseen forces. Of a 1995 trip to Rome, Sullivan writes: “… it seemed to happen on its own, with things falling into place as if planned – though not by me – and a familiar sense that I was being guided …” Sullivan includes extensive details about the war, which, while providing necessary context, are often confusing and slow the book to a turgid pace. Contributing to the book’s confusion is the absence of a sorely needed index. Hundreds of pages intervene between references to obscure historical figures or towns, and it’s impossible for the reader to quickly locate the first description. In addition, the book’s authority could have been enhanced by detailed end notes, rather than the annotated list of sources that Sullivan supplies. Although Sullivan’s exhaustive investigation certainly earns him the “detective” label, the book leaves the question of miracles unsolved.”

Sassy Librarian wrote this review Thursday, July 17 2008. ( reply | permalink )