Happy Monday!  Last week was a good one for me for reading and blogging-got lots of things accomplished!

Books I finished last week-

Darling Jim, by Christian Moerk

Monster, by Walter Dean Myers

Rules, by Cynthia Lord

Dark Summer, by Iris Johansen

Interworld, by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reeves

 

Keeping Corner, by Kashmira Sheth

Up this week-

Little Be-Bop, by Francesca Lia Block

Rainbow Boys, by Alex Sanchez

The God Box, by Alex Sanchez

Speak, by Laurie Halse Andersen

Luna, by Julie Ann Peters

The Perks of Being A Wallflower, by Stephen Chobsky

Most of the above books will be reviewed on my new blog, Second Childhood Reviews, which I started as a special site for the children's and young adult books I read.  Besides the book reviews, I'll try to have parent and teacher resources about the books as well.  Come check it out!

Happy reading this week!

Why Have One When You Can Have Two?

Any faithful reader of my blog knows that I have been working on master's degree in reading-no, that's not a degree for sitting on your couch with a book (if only!), but a degree that will qualify me to be a reading specialist in a school setting.  As a result, I have rediscovered my love for young adult literature.

This summer is my children's literature course, and one of the assignments is to read six books from a list of options and write reviews for them.  Well, clearly I could write the reviews in my sleep, having had lots of practice over the last year or so.  I am so excited about this class-when it's all said and done I will have read over 20 young adult titles in the next month or so.

I am so excited about those young adult books that I have decided they need their own blog.  So, I've started Second Childhood Reviews.  Like Book Addict Reviews, this site will be where I review all of the YA books I read.  In addition, there will be resources for parents and teachers about how to use the books with their children or in their classroom.  So, if you want to check out what I've done so far, come on over.  I look forward to seeing you there!

Darling Jim, by Christian Moerk

I've read a lot of serial killer themed mysteries-I mean, A LOT!  For a while there it felt like all I ever read was mysteries and thrillers, so my serial killer quotient was pretty high.  But I have never come across a mystery quite like Christian Moerk's Darling Jim.

Darling Jim a multi-layered story of deception, obsession, and madness. Two sisters and their aunt are found dead in a house in rural Ireland.  The townspeople are shocked to discover that the aunt had been holding her nieces prisoner, slowly poisoning them.  In a final showdown, it appeared that the sisters had managed to kill their aunt before succumbing themselves. There was evidence that a third girl was also held hostage, but she was nowhere to be found when the bodies were discovered.  A few weeks later, a postal worker, Niall, finds a diary in the post, written by one of the two slain sisters.  It details the extraordinary events that led up to her death.  Between the pages of her journal lies the tale of Darling Jim, a traveling storyteller who enchants the villagers in each town with macabre tales of love, obsession, and death-stories that eerily resemble real life crimes that happen in each place he stops.  How the sisters get tangled in Jim's web becomes tragically apparent as Niall reads.  As he is drawn into their story, Niall searches for the truth about Jim-and the elusive third sister-in a quest that brings him closer to danger than he ever expected.

This book was mesmerizing.  Jim is beguiling, and ruthless.  The sisters are strong and fiercely loyal to each other, but they are not immune to Jim's power to enchant.  The whole novel is tied together by the macabre story that Jim tells as he travels across Ireland-a tale of betrayal, lust, and madness.  As the story progresses it becomes more and more sinister, until the true face of Jim is shown, savage and deadly.  The narrators-Fiona and Roisin-are deeply flawed, but honest in their account of their part in the events that led to their deaths.  A modern Gothic novel, this book is a great read for anyone who prefers their mysteries on the sinister side.

Monster, by Walter Dean Myers

I heard a disturbing statistic today-the United States has the fastest growing prison population in the world.  Not just in the western world, but the world-period!  That means that totalitarian governments like North Korea and Iran put fewer people in jail than we do.  Much of this can be traced back to mandatory sentencing for drug crimes-and while I have many opinions on that, it doesn't have much to do with the review I am about to write.  What does is another disturbing trend-more and more states are allowing youth as young as 15 to be tried as adults for violent or drug-related crimes. 

Walter Dean Myers takes this issue on in his book, Monster.  Monster is the story of Steve Harmon, a 16 year-old black teenager living in Harlem.  At the opening of the book Steve is incarcerated, about to stand trial for felony murder, a charge that could carry the death penalty.  We quickly learn a few things about Steve-he's smart, he's creative, and he's terrified.  The only way he can deal with the emotions brought on by his incarceration and trial are to treat them as a screenplay.  This budding film maker may or may not have been involved in a drugstore robbery, a robbery that went horribly wrong when the store owner was shot and killed.  Steve's supposed part in the robbery-look out.  The book follows his trial, and the effect that it has on him and his family.

Most of Myers' books take on issues of race, racism, and growing up black and male in our society.  One of his strengths is that he does not make excuses for poor choices.  What he does is paint a pretty stark picture of what it can be like to grow up black, male, and poor in America.  You may not always like his characters, but you can understand their lives and their choices based on the circumstances in which they live.  Monster is no different.  It would be easy to make this story about racist police and racist judges sending another black boy to prison, but the story is more nuanced than that.  Not that there aren't elements of race and racism woven into the narrative-it is impossible to separate that strand of American culture from the rest when talking about issues of poverty, crime, and justice in America's urban centers.  But the book is not about racism, per se.  It is about one boy, coming to terms with what it would mean if he spent the rest of this life behind bars.

To me, that is the real issue that this book raises.  How can we, as a society, support sending teenagers as young as 15 and 16 to jail for the rest of their lives?  We must believe that teenagers have not yet reached the age of responsibility, seeing as we don't let children that young vote, drink alcohol, smoke tobacco, or make their own medical decisions.  How then can we expect them to pay for the rest of their lives for a decision made before rationality, reason, and responsibility have truly taken hold of their minds?   I don't have the answer for how to rehabilitate young offenders, so I won't pretend that I do, but it seems to me that before we start locking children up for what could amount to 60 or 70 years (provided the violence in prison doesn't kill them sooner, but that is another post for another blog), we should at least make sure that we have exhausted every other possibility. 

Rules, by Cynthia Lord

One of the joys of being a teacher is having an excuse to keep up with the latest in children's and young adult literature.  In my quest to become a reading specialist, I even get to take a class where all we do is read children's and young adult literature!  The fact that this class happens to correspond with my summer vacation means I get to spend the next few weeks ensconced on my couch with a stack of books, reading to me heart's content!

The first book I read for my class is called Rules, by Cynthia Lord.  I must admit that I was given a copy of this book at school by some very smart ladies who told me I should read it to my class, but after skimming it I put it away in favor of other things.  Had I only listened to these very smart ladies I would have discovered this moving story of family and friendship that much sooner (sorry Gail and Rachel!).  The book is about a 12 year-old girl named Catherine.  Her younger brother, David, has autism.  All Catherine wants is a normal life, for once!  What she doesn't want is to spend the summer making up new rules ("No toys in the fish tank.", "A boy takes off his shirt to swim, but not his shorts.") for David about how to be "normal".  When a new girl moves in next door, she is hopeful that this can be the friendship that she's dreamed of-if only she can leave David and his problems behind.

This novel gives an honest portrayal of people with special needs.  For the most part people with disabilities in our society are ignored, unless their story is especially "inspirational" or their disability is unusual and therefore ripe for exploitation by the media.  This novel, suitable for ages 9-12, shows people with disabilities exactly as they are-very much like the rest of us, strong in some ways, weak in others, needing to feel loved, valued, and cared for.  As Catherine goes through the ups and downs of being a pre-teen, she has reason to question exactly what "being normal" means.  Her journey helps us see that the way that David's autism impacted her life said more about her than about him.  In the end she learns that some rules are meant to be broken.

Dark Summer, by Iris Johansen

Iris Johansen and I have a love/hate relationship.  If you're not familiar with her, she writes thrillers with paranormal elements.  Normally, I like both of those things.  About half of the time, when I pick up one of her books, I get a day or two of brain candy out of it.  Sometimes, however, I pick up a Johansen book only to put it down in disgust 50 pages in.  Not disgust like "Ewww, this is gory!", but disgust like "How can she think I'm dumb enough to believe that?!?" It's the brain candy that makes me keep trying (that, and the fact that my mother reads her so I get her books for free!)

Luckily for me, Dark Summer (2008) is like a giant Hershey kiss!  Devon Brady is a devoted veterinarian, working a search and rescue mission after and earthquake on an island in the Caribbean (eerie coincidence!) with her dog, Gracie, when a mysterious stranger arrives carrying a wounded dog.  Marrok, the stranger, leaves the dog in Devon's care, and disappears.  Devon is forced to take the dog back to the states with her (a dog who is healing at a suspiciously rapid rate!).  Before Marrok can come and get his dog, Devon's quiet small-town life is shattered when gunmen kill two of her friends, and force he to go on the run with Marrok and his dog.  The secrets that Devon learns about the dogs, and Marrok, will change her life forever.

The novel is suspenseful, and the action well-paced.  Devon as a character is pretty believable, and the Marrok character is one of those brooding men "with a past" that so many women seem to find intriguing in fiction.  What makes the book, though, is the author's obvious love for dogs.  The book is full of dogs-beautiful, smart, loyal, special dogs.  Very quickly I found myself willing to do very nasty things to anyone who wanted to hurt the dogs-and yes, I knew they were fictional.  But I didn't want them to be, which is perhaps one of the greatest compliments that a reader can give an author.  Anyone who knows and loves dogs can completely believe the "superpower" that Johansen gives them could be real, which brought an authenticity to the story that you ordinarily don't get out of fantasy/science fiction, which is sort of what this book is.  There is the inevitable romance between Devon and Marrok, which I sometimes find distracts from the story, but it fit here.  This is a good summer read!

Undone, by Karin Slaughter

OK, despite my great love for thrillers and mysteries of all kinds I will admit that like any genre fiction, eventually they become pretty predictable.  There's a bad guy or two, some kind of police officer/private detective/innocent bystander who is investigating and/or gets sucked into some kind of crime, or has a stalker, or is on the run from an abusive ex, or the mob...Enjoyable, but not earth shattering.

Karin Slaughter's book, Undone, is a thriller.  In fact, it's a serial-killer thriller, which should be a sub-genre if it isn't already.  But it's a thriller with a difference.  The story opens on an elderly couple driving through the woods when they run into a naked woman running out of the trees.  The woman is rushed to the ER in Dr. Sara Linton's hospital.  Sarah is still mourning the death of her husband, a police officer, in the line of duty.  For three years she has cared about very little other than trying to make it through the day, but this woman catches her interest.  The woman has been tortured, and is unable to speak. Also at the hospital is Special Agent Faith Mitchell of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations being treated for a fainting spell.  Once she senses that a big case is brewing, she send her partner out to investigate. Once at the scene of the accident, Special Agent Will Trent, Faith's partner, uncovers a hole where the woman was kept-and she was not the only one.   What starts as a bizarre car accident quickly becomes something much more sinister.

What makes this novel different from the many others with similar themes is, like in all of Slaughter's books, the characters.  We've met Sarah, Faith, and Will before-though in different series.  In this novel Slaughter merges her Grant County series with her Will Trent series to create the Georgia series.  Despite this, reading these characters in their new configuration made them feel fresh to me.  I was especially intrigued by Will Trent in this book.  Slaughter did a great job making his pain, confusion, and despair real.  Faith's medical struggles and Sarah's continued grief were relate-able and well-written, but it was Will's character that made me feel like this story was more than just a formula thriller.  If you are a Karin Slaughter fan, you should enjoy this latest installment.  If not, I'd suggest going back to read her earlier works, since they give you some background, though it is not strictly necessary for you to read the other series to get into this one.