Listening for Lucca, by Suzanne LaFleur

"I'm obsessed with abandoned things." So begins LaFleur's quiet and enchanting book about friendship, family, choice, ghosts and history.

Siena's family is about to abandon Brooklyn for the beaches of Maine.  Siena doesn't really mind.  There's not much tying her to Brooklyn anymore.  Her once deep friendship with Kelsey has fizzled since Kelsey no longer seems interested in Siena's dreams or imaginings.  And honestly, Siena is a little frightening about what has been happening to her lately.

She has always had vivid dreams, but now these dreams are creeping into her waking hours.  Scenery seems to shift and she finds herself viewing history, when she should be seeing what everyone else is seeing.  Maybe Maine will help?

The move is not for Siena, however, but for her little brother Lucca.  Lucca used to be a run of the mill little kid...sticky and loud.  But now Lucca is silent.  Siena's mom is desperate for anything that will give her son a voice again.

Once Siena is in the new house, she just knows that there are ghosts.  What's more, is that Lucca seems to sense them too.  She has no sooner unpacked her collection of abandoned things, when her vivid dreaming and visions start again.  Only now Lucca is scared, and Siena promises him that she will get to the bottom of things.

When Siena finds an old lost pen high up in her closet, pieces of the past come forward and help her to understand not only her dreams and her visions, but her family as well.

This is a lovely slow reveal of a book that will delight detail oriented readers.  LaFleur weaves the story together with invisible strings that form a delicate pattern that becomes clear in due time.  Each character is fully developed and the past and the present storylines never compete with each other; rather they complete each other.

Simply captivating.

Violet in Bloom: A Flower Power Book

The girls are back ready to start really using their website and to get past the FIST incident (Fake Incident of the Stolen Turtle) that ended up bringing them all together in the first place.  After Katie-Rose posts a meet up on Luvyabunches.com, Yassaman wants to get the girls to start to honor their second promise after being FFFs, which is to use their flower power for good.  She has an idea that she wants to share with the girls, but Katie-Rose's strong personality is making it hard to do.  Yassaman takes to their website to tell the girls.

Yassaman wants to launch a snack attack!  She has been doing some research and has discovered that the Cheezy Nips that their teachers hand out at snack are really bad for you and filled with the kind of ingredients that lead to being overweight and having heart problems.  She just needs to girls to help her come up with some ideas as to how to make their school a Cheezy Nip free zone.

Each girl is looking at the problem from her own angle, but each girl has something else going on in her life as well!  For Milla it's her crush on Max.  She's even willing to overcome her fear of his hamster to spend some quality time with him.  After all, he's smart and cool and nice...Milla figures that is worth holding Stewy (the hamster).  She even starts to like Stewy, and everything is going great until he gogo boot and Stewy get a little too close for comfort.  Now she's mortified, still crushing and she can't look Max in the eye.  The snack attack seems like a good distraction from her worries, so Milla digs into some research and finds out some stuff about the company that makes Cheezy Nips that really makes the girls want to get them out of their school.

For Violet, it's her mom.  Her mom is still in the hospital dealing with her issues, and Violet hasn't even been to see her, even though her dad has asked her to go.  Violet's just not ready.  But when she gets called down to the office one day for a phone call, and her mother's on the other end begging her to come visit, what can she do?  To make matters worse, Cyril was resting on a mat in the office and he heard the whole thing.  Sure Cyril doesn't talk much, but he is always writing in that notebook, and while Violet was on the phone he was scribbling away.  Just how much did he hear?  And what if he tells?

Katie-Rose is stressing because Natalia keeps shoving herself into the flower friends.  She has jumped on Yassaman's snack attack idea with vigor, even making cute buttons for kids to wear.  Katie-Rose does not like how Natalia is always with Yassaman and seems to be trying to push her out of the way.  Katie-Rose decides that she will be the one to make the snack attack idea work, no matter how over-the-top her methods may be.

Can these four friends put their own issues aside and get the job done?

Once more Lauren Myracle has written a friendship story that rings true.  There is so much going on in the middle school years, and 6th grade is definitely a time of transition.  The girls are passionate, but still trying to find their voices and their way.  It's easy to be mean without meaning to, especially with friends, and Myracle gets it just right.  The worrying, the loving and the anger.  I really like how each girl brings something to the story, and I really like how they genuinely care about one another.

If you have any doubts as to whether food ingredients or maltreatment of animals are issues that are on 6th graders' minds, let me tell you that they are.  The school where I work had significant cafeteria changes after a group of middle schoolers looked into the treatment of animals by a certain company.  The school no longer orders from that company...and it was all thanks to the students!

Fans of the first book will eat this one up, and new readers will not have a problem getting into this episode of the story.  The cover appeal alone will take this off the shelves, but readers will hand it from tween to tween and it may not come back to the shelf for a while!

The Kneebone Boy, by Ellen Potter

As fellow readers, I am sure that some of you have experienced this. The siren song of a book simply from title and cover art alone. This was my initial experience with The Kneebone Boy by Ellen Potter. Now, I have enjoyed Potter’s work in the past, so I wasn’t worried at all about experiencing the dreaded feeling of, “but I wanted to like this book!” that happens when readers fall for covers and titles sometimes. From the creepy dark haired young children staring out with their older blond brother wrapped in a scarf and holding a cat, to the bare feet hanging from the tree, I was simply intrigued.

Upon opening the arc, I was greeted with Chapter 1 followed by a bit of foreshadowing of the upcoming chapter: “In which we meet the Hardscrabbles, unearth a triceratops bone, and begin to like Lucia even more.” The Hardscrabbles are siblings Otto, Lucia and Max, who all live in the town of Little Tunks with their artist father Casper. Their mum is simply gone. She had been there, then she wasn’t. As in most small towns, the rumours began to spread…especially when Otto gives up talking aloud (he has invented a sort of sign language that he and Lucia use) and takes to wearing his mum’s scarf everywhere.

Casper is a peculiar sort of artist in that he paints portraits of royalty…exclusively exiled royalty. Casper says, "...there is something extraordinary about the face of a person who has fallen from greatness. They remind me of angels tossed out of heaven who are now struggling to manage the coin-operated washing machine at the Scrubbly-Bubbly Laundromat" (arc p.23) As you can imagine, exiled royals are not big on settling up their bills, so the Hardscrabbles don't live a luxurious existence by any means, and it means that their father is often traveling to wherever it is that the exiles are.

Usually when their dad goes away, the children stay with kooky Mrs. Carnival from down the way, but this time Casper tells them that they are to stay with their cousin Angela in London. Lucia especially is quite excited about this turn of events, and some time in London would be great if cousin Angela were actually at home.  Stuck on their own in London, the kids come up with a plan that doesn't involve staying back in Little Tunks with Mrs. Carnival.  Instead of trying to head home, the kids go on another adventure to find their Great Aunt Haddie in Snoring-by-the-Sea.

It turns out that not-so-old Haddie is renting a castle folly that is chock-full of its own secrets, including the entrance (a Tyrolean traverse), a parent castle (named the Kneebone Castle), and some pretty interesting rats.

I don’t want to go too deeply into the plot and get all spoiler-y. Suffice it to say there are some twists and turns that will make readers want to start flipping back through the text looking for clues. From the beginning where readers are told that the narrator is one of the Hardscrabbles, but not which one, to the very big reveal, Potter has woven together a plot that flows pretty seamlessly. The characters are all well developed (I grew particularly fond of Otto) and their personalities will draw readers in. This is the kind of book that captures readers at the beginning and keeps them in its thrall all the way through. Emily Reads captures the essence in her haiku review found here.

The Joy of Spooking: Fiendish Deeds

Spooking is the perfect place for Joy Wells. She is as easily creepy as the old neighborhood, obsessed as she is with the stories of E.A. Peugeot and forever sneaking out to walk through the cemetery and the bog dragging her brother Byron along with her. It’s too bad that the Spooking area is considered obsolete by the mayor of Darlington --the newer part of town. The Darlings as they’re called, like things clean, neat and in rows, and Spooking does not fit the mould.

One day when Joy and Byron are out exploring the Spooking bog in search of the bog fiend, they come upon an old woman foraging. She says her name is Madame Portia and she tells the children that she lives in the bog. Her late husband was a naturalist who studied the unique ecosystem. When she invites them home Byron has visions of child sized ovens, but Joy has no fear…even when Madame Portia’s house turns out to be a rat filled submarine shaped building on stilts.

Not everyone enjoys the bog like Madame Portia and Joy, however. There is a plan in Darlington to turn the bog into “The Misty Mermaid Water Park”, which means that Darlington would be creeping even closer into Spooking territory.

P.J. Bracegirdle has written a deliciously dark story filled with mystery, murder and fiendish characters. From the embittered Mayor’s assistant Mr. Phipps, to the dark hearted Guy Smiley character of the Mayor, adults are clearly not to be trusted. Teachers play popular favorites, and children are cruel. There is bloodshed in this title of the ends justifying the means variety. Bracegirdle takes on the sanitized version of life that suburbia has to offer with scathing results. After Mr. Phipps spends time in Kiddie Kastle (a themed birthday party place) he muses, “What a pathetic operation. A case of chicken pox would have been a more authentic medieval experience, and arguably more fun…” (p. 98).

Others have said that this series will appeal to fans of the Addams Family, Edward Scissorhands and the like. The Joy of Spooking has hit that rare place of appealing to tweens and teens both because of the smart writing, societal commentary and the fact that it’s creepy without straying into silly.

Fans of Basye’s (Heck) and of Bellairs (The House with A Clock in Its Walls, etc.) should be intrigued.

Dear Julia

So a quick internet search yields over 43 million hits for "Julia Child". In these times of celebrity chefs and reality food shows, you may think that Julia wouldn't catch hold with the younger set, but you'd be wrong. With films like Julie & Julia opening to the tune of $20 million, Julia Child is as much of a pop culture phenom as she's ever been.

Elaine Hamilton has been writing letters to Julia Child since before she could spell. Elaine is the eye in the hurricane of her family, calmly waking before her 4 brothers and parents and preparing filling breakfasts, packing delicious lunches, and serving Friday dinners that could rival the local French Restaurant. Elaine is obsessed with Julia Child and haute cuisine.

Lucida Sans (aka Isadora Wilhelminetta Fischburger), on the other hand, wants to be FAMOUS! For what, she's not sure, but with her costumed existence, two mom headed family, and penchant for over-the-top solos during theater auditions, she certainly gets noticed.

Elaine and Lucida cross paths at the New Paltz Festival on the Green, when Elaine is handing out fliers for her feminist/politician mother, and Lucida's interpretation of Juliet brings about a chain of events of epic proportions resulting in some serious flames. Lucida takes a liking to Elaine, and being a girl with few friends herself, Elaine accepts an invitation to Lucida's for dinner.

Thus begins an opposites-attract friendship that brings Elaine out of her shell, and helps to tone down Lucida. The pages are filled with amazing foodie moments, characters that are bigger than life, and wacky revenge plots. Amy Bronwen Zemser has written a fun-filled book examining what it means to be a family, a friend, and oneself. Elaine's brothers are hilarious with cross-dressing Chris taking the cake, and Lucida herself is a delight. As Cindy Dobrez of Bookends puts it, "the whole book was so over the top that those crazy elements work."

While the setting is high school, this is the perfect book for a more sophisticated tween reader. There is a dash of romance, lots of ups and downs about friendship, and two odd-girl-out characters who are totally endearing and independent.

A laugh-out-loud read for girls...finally.

A Long Way From Chicago

Call me old fashioned, but this is the kind of story telling that I love. Filled with larger than life characters and slices of Americana, Richard Peck’s stories of Grandma Dowdel are ripe for reading aloud and reading again!

Joey and Mary Alice were shipped off from Chicago to their Grandmother’s house every August starting when Joey was 9 years old. As Joey said, “Being Chicago people, Mother and Dad didn’t have a car. And Grandma wasn’t on the telephone.” (p. 4) so Joey and Mary Alice would be put on the train and sent on to Grandma’s place.

Grandma Dowdel is a big woman who is incredibly self-sufficient. It’s 1929 when the stories start, and Joey and Mary Alice are mad that their folks wouldn’t let them parade past Al Capone’s bullet ridden corpse in Chicago. Little did they know that they’d be sitting in a room with a corpse when they hit Grandma Dowdel’s place. Turns out that Shotgun Cheatham died, and because of his name, some of the bigger newspapers took a liking to his obituary and wanted to find out just exactly who this fellow was. Grandma is the type of woman who likes to keep to herself, but when she hears that folks have been making up all kinds of stories about Shotgun, she lets Joey and Mary Alice in on the kind of man that Shotgun really was.

Then the reporter shows up at her door, and Joey and Mary Alice get a taste of the adventures in store living with Grandma. No sooner does she discount the story that folks in town have told the reporter, but she is spinning a yarn so deep that the kids simply can’t believe it. And the kicker is that they are now sitting in Grandma’s front room, with Shotgun’s corpse laid out for the town and the reporter to see.

This first story gets readers ready and on the edge of their seats for the rest. From make-shift wakes, to out pranking the Halloween pranksters, to beating the law at every turn, Grandma Dowdel will have readers chuckling and gasping out loud. Old fashioned everyday gardening, canning, hunting, community events, and life without the distraction of media pepper the text along with the realities of the Depression era. Wonderfully written, these stories beg to be read aloud. I can’t wait to read the next installment about the family that moves on in next to Grandma!

Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck

Milton has successfully managed to get back to the “Stage” leaving Marlo and his friends down there. He is racked with guilt, and isn’t quite sure that Heck really even existed. Since Heck is ultimately a purgatory, Milton decides to go visit Damian in the hospital to figure out if everything that he thinks happened after the fateful marshmallow explosion actually did happen!

Meanwhile, Marlo has been moved to Rapacia – the second circle of Heck which is overseen by the Grabbit; a rhyming, mechanical bunny of sorts. The kicker is that the Grabbit’s warren is located just beneath the best mall ever. Mallvana has everything that a greedy little shoplifter like Marlo could ever want. If only she could convince her demon teachers to let her go there.

Well Marlo is Marlo, and who better to deal with demons and double crossers than she? Along with her passel of frenemies (Lyon, Bordeaux, Norm, and Jordie) Marlo is forced to wear the latest in retirement fashion, and take classes in heckonomics. Marlo isn’t surprised by much in Heck, but she soon finds herself under the Grabbit’s spell. She is jonesing to shoplift in a big way, and only to bring the spoils to her new Vice Principal. When she is approached to make the biggest heist in Heck history (the hopeless diamonds), how can she refuse? Will Marlo be able to break free of the Grabbit, or will she simply become another minion in the race to get more, more, more?

Daly E. Basye has written a darker follow up to the initial installment in the Heck series. Instead of poop and ping-pong balls, readers are exploring cultish religions, the idea of Greed with a capital “G”, as well as pondering the difference between want and need. Don’t get me wrong…it is still pun central here in Heck with references that run the sublime to the absurd, it just seems that the audience for the second book needs a maturity level a bit higher than required for Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go. Marlo has the seeds of a crush going, and even though Heck is a place where time stands still, Marlo, Milton and the other kids are growing world weary from trying to “survive”. I am interested in seeing where this series goes, since there are, after all, 7 circles you know where.

All-Season Edie

Meet Edie. She's eleven years old and heading to the lake with her mom and dad, but without her sister Dexter. This summer Dexter's ballet camp conflicts with the family vacation, so she will be staying with Mean Meagan for the 2 weeks that the family is gone. Also, the lake is not exactly the Grand Canyon, but Grandpa just had a stroke, and Edie's dad doesn't want to be too far away.

The lake seems a bit boring at first, but soon Edie's imagination has her in swimming like a whale, and becoming Neptune. She also meets Robert. A fat kid who is at the lake with his mom and a man who is not his dad. Edie and Robert are soon on fishing expeditions, and watching movies. They are just starting to get to know each other when Edie's parents get a call and they leave the lake a whole week early.

Edie is distraught about her grandfather and decides that learning some magic might help him out. Not the bunny out of the hat variety, but the kind of spells that can make people sick or well.

We watch Edie navigate a year in her life as she discovers that the things she always thought were true, suddenly seem less than. Maybe Mean Meagan isn't so mean. Maybe grandpa really is sick. Maybe Edie doesn't hate dancing after all. And maybe Dex isn't so perfect.

This is a wonderful tween book. Annabel Lyon has written a character driven story that is authentic, charming and spot on. Bits of text had me laughing out loud...

"Wow," Robert says for the third time, and I see he's finally starting to believe me. "No kidding?" He squints at me, and I can tell he just thought of something else. "Do you always get caught?" he asks. "Don't you ever get away with anything?"
"No," I say. I figure getting away with something would be like catching a fish: it never really happens, not really. p. 34.

The relationship between Edie and Dexter grows nicely throughout the book, as does Edie's relationship with herself.

A fun read for those who like to get to know their characters.

(And hey, I managed my first title on my Canadian Book Challenge!)

Heck: Where The Bad Kids Go

Check out this cover! How cute.

I was lucky enough to attend the Random House Summer Preview last week on Valentines Day. The folks over there put on a lovely luncheon, complete with candies, kisses, and glittery lips! But the real show-stoppers were the books!

Marlo and Milton are living in Gernerica, Kansas where Milton is your run of the mill kid, and Marlo is a bit of a hellion. She is bent on pulling off the greatest shoplifting extravaganza ever! Unknown to Milton, Marlo has pulled him into her plan. They are running through the mall trying to avoid security when resident trouble maker Damian pulls off his own stunt...blowing up the gigantic marshmallow bear statue in the centre of the mall.

All of a sudden, Milton and Marlo find themselves sliding for thousands of miles, watching the air change from white clouds, to ash grey, to sooty black until they land in an Olympic-sized kiddie pool filled with Ping-Pong balls and garbage! Where the heck are they?

Well...Heck.

This is the place where the bad kids are housed until they turn 18. A place filled with disgusting creatures, school, and bullies. Milton can understand why Marlo ended up here, but why him? Until unwittingly shoplifting some lip-gloss, Milton's record was flawless!

Now Milton is on a quest to get the heck out of Heck! Can he do it with a little help from some other kids gone wrong?

Dale E. Bayse has written a romp of a story filled with gross-out moments involving poop, brussel sprouts, and Barney. Lots of word play and hilarious situations arise. I do wonder, however, if today's kids will get the joke of Lizzie Borden teaching home-ec, or Nixon teaching ethics. Kids may just read over these details and enjoy the story.