One of the things about getting books at the BEA is sometimes you enter a series in the middle. This is obviously not the first book in this series, which is based on the children’s classic, Peter Pan. This is like the “real story” the original might be based on, and has more of an explanation of things like why Peter can fly, and how Tinkerbell – who prefers to be called a ‘bird-person,” not a fairy, came to be. I am just guessing the prior book(s) go over the same ground as the original James Barrie story does, but it’s okay to start here,
enough is covered that you understand the lay of the land.



A good, rollicking story, with plenty of action, pirates, mystery, and science fiction via a substance called “starstuff” and the “Others” who covet it, though it does not feel at all sci-fi. The story moves along at a good clip, and the other boys of Neverneverland get more character development, as they cope with Cap’n Hook and his crew while Peter and Tinkerbell are off to the foggy, grimy streets of Victorian London to save his friend Molly and her family from the Others. It is 541 pages, but moves along at a good, satisfying clip, so don’t let the size fool you. Probably written with boys as the target audience, but enough in it for girls – and grown-ups – too.



And it wasn’t until the end that I realized that it is “that” Dave Barry – the guys from Miami who writes the hysterical, wry newspaper columns – who is one of the authors. And that’s why I have a signed copy, I didn’t know what the book was, but I chuckle aloud at Dave Barry’s columns, so stood in line to get a signed copy. But in retrospect, it makes perfect sense. It is a fun and worthwhile read, no matter your age or gender. And there’s nothing in it that’s too scary for younger kids who are avid readers.

by Sherman Alexie

Okay, so I read a lot of books about teenagers and kids, but hey, I read what I pull out of the box!


This is a fun, funny book, completely with plenty of “drawings by the main character,” actually illustrations by Ellen Forney. But the main character, Junior, likes to draw, and her cartooning style suits his character well. Junior isn’t strong, handsome or buff, he’s a scrawny kid who nonetheless loves basketball, and plays with his best friend, who has all those attributes and a serious anger, too.


The book has plenty of dark, serious issues, but still manages to be fun, and the main character, with all his flaws, and screwed up circumstances in life, manages to keep a bouyancy about himself. He’s a Spokane Indian kid living on “the rez” and dealing with all the normal struggles a teenage boy goes through, but multiplied by about ten.


Dealing with the broken people, alcoholism, the broken hearts and fading dreams of those around him, and trying to make his way in the world outside the Rez, while still trying to stay part of his Rez community makes a story a lot of kids who have felt like an outsider will enjoy. Adults, too. Based on the author’s experiences growing up, it stays funny but has a strong and serious heart. A quick, fun read, but not fluff – read it if you can.

Really interesting, sweet book from the perspective of an abnormal child. Merilee – who hates her name, by the way, and has heard every “Merrily we roll along” joke ever, thank you – is a little girl growing up in small town Texas, who is well aware that she is different. Through her telling the story, you figure out that she is autistic, in the Asperger’s range of the Autism spectrum. She has a very specific way she would like everything in her life to be. She likes her VOE – Very Ordered Existence.


Merilee has her routines, her place in the world – and everyone else’s place – all figured out. Her parents are strange but she knows they love her and believe in her, even if they don’t understand her. Her sister, Bug – real name Bitsey – is annoying, and is completely annoyingly normal. Bug never stops talking, while Merilee has an amazing vocabulary inside her head, she has trouble getting words out – or the right words out. The story really begins, though, when another misfit – a lonely boy named Biswick with an alcoholic poet of a father moves into town, and against her will, becomes her friend. and an older woman named Veraleen also becomes her family’s cook, and just like that, her Very Ordered Existence begins to fall apart.


How she begins to deal with change, an unlikely friendship, and learning to try to understand other people is all a fascinating and heartwarming story, and makes this “odd child” as Autistic kids are often seen, seem not only human, but like a very good person despite herself.


A wonderful story, and a good book, and while there are some heavy issues, they are handled pretty deftly, and in a pretty kid-safe way.


I heartily recommend this book, it is far more fun than I may have made it seem, and will leave you smiling.

I have know of Neil Gaiman a long time, as he was the first artists to use the Macintosh to create a graphic novel, back in the ancient days when I was studying illustration at Mass Art. Stood in line for a couple hours at the BEA when it was in Los Angeles to get him to sign Coraline when it came out.


His book that came out this October, of course, considering its genre, is The Graveyard Book. It’s a wonderful, kind of scary but ultimately very sweet story of a little boy whose family was murdered when he was just a toddler. He wanders out into the night as the evil man Jack searches for him, and toddles and crawls through the gates and into the neighboring cemetery. The residents of the cemetery, mostly ghosts of long-dead individuals come to a hasty decision to hide the child, as the ghost of his newly-dead mother passes by and implores them to protect her baby, before she fades away. An old childless couple Mister and Mistress Owens, dead for over 200 years, convince the others that they should protect and raise the child, and so they do, with the help of Silas, the only one who lives there that can leave the cemetery. He’s not a ghost, likely a vampire, but that’s never spelled out.


They name him Nobody Owens, Bod for short, and he grows and thrives in the shadows and among the shades, learning from everyone from the oldest among them, a Roman citizen, to Victorian schoolteachers, and the many children who died at early ages. He learns useful things, like Fading and Disappearing, and Dreamwalking as well as his letters, from the gravestones.


One day he encounters a little girl, whose family is now living in his former house, and their friendship eventually leads to his discovery by the evil Jack, which puts everything and everyone he has grown to love at risk.


It’s a wonderful book, just won a Newbury Award so I am not the only one who thinks so! It is full of creepy, scary things, and wonderful characters from throughout many time periods on the English countryside, and is just a great book. Very young children might be scared, but I doubt it. Really, I recommend it to anyone who loves a good scary story.

This book is exactly what you’ll think it will be. It boasts on the back cover that it is “from the publisher of national bestselling series “Gossip Girl, The Clique, The It Girl and The A-List” so it aims to tap into the “fashion, money and beauty is everything” market for teen girls. Of course, the four main characters are all beautiful, thin, attending an exclusive private school, and you have your typical cliched characteristics for each one: Janie is “the scholarship student,” Melissa is “the minority” – black and Korean, so she counts as two, I guess, Charlotte is the spoiled rich girl, and Petra is the “poor little rich girl with the dysfunctional family.” There’s even a “gay male best friend” stylist for Charlotte. Oh, and they all hate each other. Of course.


It is predictable, but an okay read, and fashion illustrations by “Janie” are sprinkled throughout, so you don’t have to encounter too many unbroken pages of text.
Oh, and did I mention there are “boys” to obsess over? Yeah, they’re all cute, smart and heartbreakers …
It’s fluff, sure, but harmless, as long as you don’t mind feeling pandered to, or pretending such vapid creatures exist, and setting aside any actual thinking while reading. It may be wildly popular among its target audience, but hey, that’s what it is made to be.


If you’re not a fashion-crazy tweenager, don’t bother. I’m not positive you’ll lose brain cells while ready it, it just might feel like it.


Oh, and P.S. – I HATE when a fiction book cover has photos on it, in general, so you don’t get to picture the characters in your own head, but have to try to reconcile those photos to the descriptions. Just sayin’ …

Excellent book, interesting premise, good characters and well-thought out conflicts. In the world Katsa has grown up in, some people are “Graced.” This means they have a special talent other people do not, and is signaled by the person’s eyes changing to two different colors. So a child cannot hide being Graced, and where she is from, all Graced children are given to the King, who gets to decide whether the child will stay in his service, or be returned to his or her parents. Graces can be anything, useful or mundane. Some are gifted with swimming, sewing, whistling, fishing, or archery – in Katsa’s case, her Grace was identified when she was 8 years old, as a Killing Grace.

The King is her uncle, and she is his responsibility anyway as her parents are deceased, so she becomes his “weapon” and he uses her to intimidate, kill or force others to bend to his will. He uses her reputation, which has grown throughout the seven Kingdoms, as a deterrent. As she matures, she becomes less and less willing to just be a ‘dumb beast” and, unbeknownst to her uncle, starts a Council of justice-minded citizens to fight abuses like his.

The book begins with Katsa and her friends rescuing a prisoner from the dungeon of another kingdom – their rescuee turns out to be an elderly Prince, for whom his grandson, Po, also a Graced fighter, is also searching. Katsa ends up knocking him unconscious before learning who he is.

They end up, through several twists and turns, teaming up, determined to find the truth behind the Prince’s kidnapping, and end up uncovering horrors in a distant kingdom, rescuing Po’s young cousin Princess Bitterblue, and getting involved in tremendous danger, as well as a well-described Quest tale.

A very interesting concept – Graced beings, and their talents being known, feared and often exploited, and how they deal with that. I have known people with two different colored eyes – my first Campfire Girls leader was one – and found it interesting. That in her world it signfies something important seems quite logical.

Well-developed characters, and a well-described lands and people keep it interesting beyond the human factor as well. It is her first novel, and she has developed a world and characters worth revisiting. So I hope there will be more, and I look forward to them!

Wicked cool – okay, so I’ve lived near Boston for 20+ years, but this is a particularly apt description for this book, and for the reality of the world Holly Black has created. I’d read her work before, so stood in line to get this signed at the 2007 BEA. I just pulled it out of the box and devoured it in a day. I suppose it’s marketed as teen fiction, as there’s no sex, and the main characters are teenagers.


This is no “fairy tale” where all is pastel and sweet and sparkley. The main character is Kaye, a teenaged pixie who was swapped with a human baby at birth. She grew up in the human world, being raised by her eccentric mother and loving grandmother, and only recently became aware of who she actually is. In her “true” form she has brilliantly green skin, green hair and eyes that are pure black with no white in them. Maintaining the “glamour” that projects her human appearance to the world is taking more skill and energy these days.


The faery world is divided into two “kingdoms” that exist in opposition to each other, Seelie and Unseelie, though neither is purely good or evil, just “other.” The two kingdoms are of course at war, and Kaye’s boyfriend, Robein, has been made King of the Unseelie (the dark side) court.


He has become King after killing its former queen, Nephamael, after being sent there to serve her by the Queen of the “light” side, the equally cruel and heartless Silarial.


Kaye, being raised human, doesn’t understand all of the rules and intricacies of faery, and gets herself in more trouble than she bargained for. She is helped by her completely mortal and gay best friend, Corny – Cornelius is his given name, he hates the Unseelie after seeing his sister drowned by one, and is suspicious of anyone faery who is NOT Kaye. Her doll-sized companion faery, Lutie, also is usually with her, often explaining how things cactually are – as she embarks on one quest, and simultaneously decides to ransom her human mother’s actual human daughter from being in thrall to Silarial at the same time.


She’s stuck, in her life between faery and human – whom the fae refer to as “ironside” as iron make faeries ill. Negotiating her own place in the world is as much of a challenge as the “impossible” quest she’s been assigned, and the one she chose for herself. Nothing goes as she has planned, and getting them all out of the mess it turns into makes for a darkly fun, twisted but in an oddly good way, kind of book.


It’s wicked, it’s dark, and it’s completely cool.


I completely recommend this book to anyone who thinks fantasy should be grittier than Tinkerbelle, rainbows and unicorns.

Think you know who your family is? Marty Winslow, married mother of three, once was sure of that answer. Then her middle daughter, Ginger, starts getting sick and eventually gets diagnosed with, and dies from Niemann-Pick. One of the things that Marty and her soon-to-be-ex husband fight over, among others, is whose “fault” Ginger’s illness was. “No sick kids in MY family” he says, as their marriage is falling apart.


Thirteen-year-old Andie also thinks, sad as it is, that she knows who her family is. She was the only child of two teachers, until three years ago when they perished in a hotel fire on a rare vacation. Andie, emotionally withdrawn and quiet, has since lived with her grandparents. The only catch in that situation is that they live in a “seniors-only” mobile home park, so she isn’t exactly supposed to be there.


Niemann-Pick is a genetically based disease, and in getting DNA testing done to assure herself her other two daughters are safe, Marty realizes the Ginger was not their biological child. Further digging leads to the realization that Ginger and Andie had been switched at birth. When she learns of Andie’s current situation, she petitions the court, and wins custody of Andie away from her grandparents.


Marty’s father, Carl, is cautiously optimistic, her younger daughter Winnie is enthusiastic, and her elder daughter, Deja, hates the idea.


So does Andie. She leaves her grandparents reluctantly, and is planning on simply biding her time until the lawyers her grandparents have engaged can get the decision reversed. From the extremely quiet life at the mobile home park, she is thrust into this wild family and awkward situation. The book’s title comes from the old drive-in movie theater, which Carls owns. Tuesday nights at The Blue Moon are family, and Marty and her daughters help out and run the concession stand.


How everyone figures out the new relationships, while continuing their own struggles with day-to-day existence, makes a good story. Study after study has shown that having a child with a terminal illness often ends marriages, and it is no secret that siblings’ lives are also effected. Neimann-Pick is one of those rare illnesses that you never hear about as it is relatively rare, but is heart-breaking when you learn about it.


There are some religious references in the book, but it is not overwhelming, preachy or distracting, just part of the story. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in human beings, and especially anyone who has had to question their own definition of family. The characters are well-drawn – no one is all good or all bad, and it’s a good read.

This is a nice, well-meaning, sad to read but hopeful story of the life of one girl, HIV positive from birth, growing up in desperate poverty in Central America. The book’s subtitle is even “A Journey of Hope.” Ana, in her short life – she’s 17 by the end of the book – has seen both her parents and an infant sibling die from AIDS, been shuffled with her siblings from relative to relative, suffered sexual abuse at the hands of one family member, and turned over to a school for “difficult” children by another. She finds a boyfriend, gets pregnant, gives birth out of wedlock, and worries about her sister, too, as well as her daughter and her own future. In the course of this she meets Jenna Bush, in Central America working with UNICEF.


Ana and others like her impress on Jenna that they are “living with AIDS,” not dying from it, and that is the message of the book. It is well-meaning and all, but would it ever have gotten published if Jenna Bush was not the daughter of a sitting US President? I rather doubt it.


It’s a nice book, I read the “advanced readers copy” which included as those often do, notes like “color pictures will be in the final printing” and notes for “photo to come” but I don’t think adding color pictures will make it any more dramatic or sadder than it already is. It’s terrible to grow up poor, abused, neglected and marginalized, but the remarkable thing is that some people survive it.


Nice book, not terribly memorable, but certainly it means well.

Remember the old Almond Growers’ commercial – “A can a day, that’s all we ask?” I’m adapting it to “a book a day, that’s what I’ll read!”


I pulled this book, Gregor the Overlander, from a box of book at the bottom of a pile, which turned out to be a box I hadn’t gotten to from the 2003 BEA – so this may be not “new” to some of you, but it was to me.


You know how fantasy books are usually set, if not at first, in rural or long-ago type places with forests and fire and knights and all that? This one is different. The story begins in an apartment building in New York City, where we meet the main character, eleven-year-old Gregor. He’s watching his baby sister, Boots, and sorta keeping an eye on his grandmother while his mom is at work. It’s a miserably hot summer day, their sister LIzzie is gone to summer camp, and his Dad has been missing for over two years – Gregor has the number down to the date.


When he goes to the basement to do laundry, his chore for the day, everything changes. Boots (actual name Margaret) crawls after a ball he’s been throwing for her, and finds a loose air vent. He sees her crawling in and goes to get her, and they both end up falling into another realm that exists below our own.


They encounter pale, translucent-skinned humans, giant cockroaches which delight Boots, 6-foot tall rats – what New York kid hasn’t heard about giant rats living in the sewers, right? And had nightmares about giant cockroaches and spiders and bats – all of which not only dwell down here, but speak and interact with the humans as well.


Gregor is a good big brother, though a bit of a worrier, just wants to get home before his mother finds them missing. Instead he ends up leading an unlikely band of creatures on a quest to find his father, who it turns out is down here but a prisoner of the bad guys – the rats – and to fulfill a prophecy written 600 years before, by the guy who founded the human colony below.


So it has all the elements of a classic coming-of-age story, but with an urban and grimy twist. Boots, the two-year-old, is a great character, loves the “beeg bugs” and the giant bats. Gregor’s love for her and his need to rescue their father keeps them both going, and she charms various creatures just by being her cheery two-year-old self, in a very believable way.


It’s such a fun book, and a real page-turner. I pulled it from the box yesterday, and finished it today between bouts of pushing slush, even though I have a couple other books in process – one of which is pretty terrible, and the other good but dense. I’ll tell you about those another day, okay?


Meanwhile, I heartily recommend this book to anyone old enough to read, and not too old to enjoy a good book. I liked it so much I didn’t even mind the “sequel alert” and am sure by now other books have followed.