The Popularity Papers: Words of (Questionable) Wisdom

Oh Lydia and Julie, I just can't quit you!

Lydia is back home, and ready to get back of the swing of things in 6th grade in the States.  Lydia comes with a plan of course, laid out in list fashion, but after her first day back, she and Julie decide to try to implement a new plan.  Lydia shares the things that worked for her while she was in London...which includes trying to befriend some kids who don't have lots of other friends and forgetting about the popular crowd.

To help them focus their efforts on more important things, the girls put together a "trunk" (re bucket) list.  Letting popularity go, what could be on the list?   Things like starring in the school play, staying up all night, and being friends with Chuck again.  As usual, while Lydia and Julie have their hearts in the right place, their plans go awry.

What I love about this series is that the girls are growing.  Amy Ignatow doesn't simply employ a formula time and time again, the characters grow and learn from the experiences they have had in the past.  It's actually heartwarming to witness!

Fans who have enjoyed the first and second installments will eat this one up, but I can see new fans jumping on-board as Julie and Lydia grow-up bit by bit.

Fun!

Blast from the Past -- Water Street, by Patricia Reilly Giff

Here is a book that I originally blurbed over at Booktopia.  It's a go-to historical fiction and one of my favorite NYC stories.

Bird and Thomas are growing up in a Brooklyn apartment just as the bridge is rising. Over on Water Street, Bird is the youngest of 3 - daughter of a bridge worker and a healer. Thomas is pretty much on his own - Da being down at the pub all the time.

Thomas dreams of being a writer. He has fashioned himself a notebook and makes sure to write everything down. He has a shadowy memory of a woman in lace sleeves who told him that writing can change it all.

Bird has her own dreams of following in her mother's footsteps and becoming a healer herself. She has a notebook where she writes down remedies ... sliced onion for bee stings, coal from the turf fire held under the nose for sneezing.

Bird always needs to fix things. She needs to get her brother Hughie to stop fighting in the backs of pubs. She needs to get sister Annie out of the box factory. She needs to save all her money to help her mother buy a farm in New Jersey.

Thomas needs to find his past and try to fix his family.

This is immigrant Brooklyn in the 1870s. Patricia Reilly Giff has managed to bring in so many aspects of daily immigrant life without making it seem like school. The streets come alive (especially when Thomas and Bird venture into Manhattan) with sights and sounds and smells. It was a pleasure to read about Brooklyn instead of the Bowery.

This book is equally suited for older tweens and younger teens. There is a bit of detailed gore described in some healing scenes that may have queasy readers blanching. Told in alternating chapters, the stories of Bird and Thomas come to life and are a pleasure to read.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid - The Ugly Truth

So, what was the release date of this book? November 9th or something?  Well, it left our shelf on that day and didn't come back until Friday.  I snagged it and used a couple of commutes to get it read so that I can put it on the shelf to disappear for the next 3 months!

Greg and Rowley are on the outs.  Greg is considering his options for new friends, but he has to face the fact that they are few and far between.  Christopher Brownfield is more of a summer friend (he's really great for keeping mosquitos away!) and Tyson Sanders has a bathroom habit that's hard overlook.

More is changing in Greg's life than just his body (a fact that he can't avoid thanks to  his teacher insisting showers happen after PE and his mother giving him an embarrassing puberty book).  His mother has decided to go back to school.  Since she is not around so much, Greg, his brothers and father are left to fend for themselves for dinner, cleaning and getting ready for school often to disasterous results, as you can imagine.

One of the best segments in the book happens when the school has a lock-in sleep over.  After all of the games and cellphones are confiscated, the fun begins with ice-breaker games, too many chaperones and an incident involving body parts and polaroid cameras! 

There were fewer laugh-out-loud moments in this installment, and Greg isn't really growing too much as a character, however, tweens are still eating up the series.  The vignette style means that readers generally will recognize their lives in the book somewhere, whether it's having to take care of an egg for health class, being locked in at school for a sleepover, or having a parent who goes back to work.  The stories are solidly in tween territory now with issues of friendship, puberty, family and the search for self swirling through the pages.

Nice and Mean, by Jessica Leader

Whenever I am in the mood for some tween realistic fiction that is fun yet solidly written, I know that I can reach for a title from Aladdin Mix. I have yet to be disappointed. This time I read the title Nice and Mean by Jessica Leader, and I know I’ll have something to hand off to my tween girls this September.

Marina is mean. There’s no real getting around it. She’s not quite queen bee material, but at Jacobs Middle School she decides what category kids fall into, especially regarding their fashion choices. She does read Seventeen and watch all of the fashion shows on television after all!

Sachi, on the other hand, is a nice girl. So nice, in fact, that she got voted “Nicest Girl” in nasty Marina’s poll of kids in their school. By why do people think Sachi’s so nice? Sure she lends out enough pencils that she has to dip into her own allowance to replenish, but she doesn’t have too many friends who really know her. She’s all about school because that is how her parents want her to be. They moved from India and sacrifice to stay in Manhattan for Sachi and her two sisters, and they expect the best.

Ironically enough, Sachi did something not so nice in order to get into video class. Her folks want her in Test Prep to give her a leg up in a couple of years to get into Stuyvesant (Manhattan’s super competitive academic high school). Sachi forged her parents’ signatures and now finds herself paired of with Marina of all people for her video project. A video based on the fashion show Victim/Victorious was not was Sachi had in mind when she was going to all of the trouble of getting into the class.

Marina does have a knack of getting her way, but at the last minute Sachi lets her video teacher know that she is interested in another angle of the fashion question. Namely, why are some things in and some out? Who decides? In fact, why are some cultures considered cooler than others? Their teacher lets the girls work separately in the name of getting things done, but when Marina breaks some rules and brings a copy of her rough cut of video home to work on and some of her friends see the way that her fashion victim Rachel is treated, everything hits the fan.

Marina’s actions have lots more consequences than she ever could have foreseen. One being that she needs Sachi more than she ever could have imagined. Will Sachi be able to find her own voice and speak up for what she needs?

Jessica Leader has gotten the multiple worlds of the middle schooler down pat. Seventh grade tends to be a time of big changes…of kids figuring out who they want to be and where they are going to fit in. Marina and Sachi, while seemingly opposites, illustrate this beautifully. Round out the cast of their satellite friends and many types of kids are shown without seeming like Leader simply lined up types and put them in. Nice and Mean shows readers that most likely, the kids they think of as mean aren’t all mean, and the kids who seem nice definitely have some back story of their own!

Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror

While I was at ALA in DC, I was fortunate enough to attend a breakfast hosted by the kind folks at HarperCollins. I was doubly fortunate to have the whirwind that is author Jennifer Finney Boylan sit down next to me, slap her hands on her copy of  Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror and launch into an extraordinary book-talk. Falcon Quinn made it to the top of my pile, due in large part for her enthusiasm for the book.

Falcon is waiting for the bus as usual, accompanied by quiet Megan and not-so-quiet Max. As they board the bus, Falcon notices a new driver, but doesn’t think too much about it, as he is distracted by some creepiness in the graveyard across the street. Before they know it, the 3 are careening through the streets, skipping stops and are soon deposited through the Bermuda Triangle and into another world.

They find themselves in the quad of Castle Grisleigh, where they are met by Mrs. Redflint who tells them that they are actually monsters and that Castle Grisleigh is an academy for monsters…a place where they can learn how to suppress their true natures and live among humans. At the Castle, the monsters are divided up by types with the sasquatches staying with sasquatches, vampires with vampires et cetera. Mrs. Redflint isn’t exactly sure what kind of monster Falcon is yet and Falcon finds himself feeling just as out of place at the Academy as he had on the outside. He doesn’t know what kind of monster he is, and even if he did, he’s not sure he would want to suppress his monsterness anyway! Just look at Max…he is loving his life as a sasquatch, why should he pretend just to be a big, hairy boy?

Jennifer Finney Boylan has written a fun and funny story about the nature of fitting in and finding friends. While she has said that Falcon is not a metaphor, the message about categories and acceptance comes across loud and clear. I have found over time that most kids do not mind the apparent messages found in many books, and I doubt that they will have an issue this time, as they themselves are in the heart of trying to figure out who they are and how to treat other kids who don’t identify as they do.  It is a big book at 486 pages, but it starts nice and quickly, and over-the-top characters like Perla (La Chupakabra), and Weems (the ghoul) will keep readers laughing out loud and wondering what will happen next.

Peace, Locomotion

I was surprised when I saw this on the arc shelf at school. I hadn't know that Jacqueline Woodson was writing a sequel to Locomotion, and I was quite delighted to pick it up.

Lonnie is writing letters to his sister Lili. They are at separate foster homes, and each is quite happy. Lonnie, however, is torn. He pretty much loves Miss Edna. She's been taking care of him, and her son Rodney is like a brother to him. Rodney even calls Lonnie his little brother. But when Lonnie's best friend Clyde tells Lonnie "Your mama's real strict" (33), Lonnie has to point out that Miss Edna is only his foster mama. Lonnie does not want to chance forgetting his parents. Clyde then relates his own experiences with Mamas, and how Mamas can come and go for lots of different reasons.

To complicate Lonnie's life a little bit more, Miss Edna's other son Jenkins is over in the war. Jenkins was never a fighter, Miss Edna explains to Lonnie, but the army said they'd pay for an education if Jenkins signed up for the reserves, and the offer was too good to refuse.

When tragedy strikes, Lonnie knows that his foster home is about to change forever.

Change is an overarching theme in Peace, Locomotion. Changes in family, homes, friends, teachers. Readers will be on the edge of tears, and not simply for content. Jacqueline Woodson is a master of language, and no words seem wasted. Each seems like it was considered and placed "just so". The format pulls readers in, and the one sided nature of the letters does not feel isolating at all(readers only see letters from Lonnie). Woodson has quite a bit to say about teachers and teaching with the juxtaposition of Ms. Marcus, Ms. Cooper, and Miss Alina. I only hope that readers will not have too many Ms. Coopers in their lives!

This is one of those special books that I feel like I will be returning to again and again.

On shelves later this month.

The Sisters 8

Annie, Durinda, Georgie, Jackie, Marcia, Petal, Rebecca and Zinnia are sisters. In fact, they are octuplets. On New Years Eve 2007, their lives suddenly changed. Their mother went to the kitchen to get some eggnog, and their father went outside to chop some wood, and they simply never returned. The girls frantically go around the house looking for their parents but all that they find is a note. An unsigned note telling the sisters that they each possess a power, and will each find a gift, before they can discover what happened to their folks.

How can eight girls (and their eight cats) find their powers, gifts, and parents while figuring out how to do things like paying the bills, making breakfast, and driving to school?

Each book is an adventure that leads the readers through a mystery where all of the sisters are involved, but the action focuses on one of the girls. Annie's Adventures highlights Annie and her power, whereas book 2 Durinda's Dangers highlights Durinda. Each girl has a distinct personality and the mix of all of them together results in something quite hilarious.

Part Snickett, part Dahl with a little dash of Gorey, author Lauren Baratz-Logsted along with Greg Logsted and Jackie Logsted have created a series that is perfect for the younger tween set. I have already test-driven the first two titles with my 4th graders, and they are bugging me for more. With 8 sisters, there is a character for every reader. Fun, fun, fun.

Diary of A Wimpy Kid - Rodrick Rules

When this FINALLY got checked in at the library last week, I eagerly snatched it up as I knew I wouldn't see it until about May.

"I guess Mom was pretty proud of herself for making me write in that journal last year, because now she went and bought me another." (p.1) And so it begins.

Greg is back, and we start at the beginning of another school year. As with the first installment, each journal entry describes a day in the life of a pretty hilarious family. From Greg's having to wear his brother's hand-me-down Speedo to swim team, to making Chirag the invisible boy, Jeff Kinney certainly has his finger on the pulse of Middle School existence.

So why "Rodrick Rules"? Well, it turns out that Rodrick knows something about Greg that Greg really doesn't want to get out. So now more than ever, Rodrick is in charge. Greg cannot tell on anything! Not even the party when his folks are out of town.

While there is nothing in this second installment that rivals the "cheese touch", it is a read that kid's cannot put down. As I said before, it is constantly checked out of my school library, and my fourth graders have even nominated the first title for their 4th grade book election this year. Perfect for reluctant and avid readers alike.