Sweethearts

Author: Sara Zarr

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Publication Year: 2008

Most of the readers will be: Middle school and high school girls.

Reader's Advisory: For another book on a girl struggling with weight issues try Erin Dionne's Models Don't Eat Chocolate Cookies.

Summary:
Jennifer Harris had a difficult childhood. She was mocked for being overweight, her mother was rarely home since she was working and going to nursing school, and she had only one friend. But Cameron Quick was such a good friend that the bad stuff almost didn't matter. Cameron made her life bearable. Then one day Cameron disappeared and the kids at school told Jennifer that he was dead. Her mother didn't deny it, so that is what she has believed all these years.
A lot has changed since then. Jennifer Harris is now Jenna Vaughn. Her mother is remarried and working as a nurse. They live in a nice house and Jenna goes to a new school. She has friends and a boyfriend. And she's not overweight anymore.
What will happen to Jenna when a very much alive Cameron Quick steps back into her life?

My favorite passage:

Right before the summer between second and third grade I was in the back of my mom's brown Geo Prism, which was parked in front of the ugly building where we rented a one-bedroom apartment. Mom had gone inside to trade her Village Inn uniform for her nursing school scrubs before taking me to the babysitter. I remember that I had a library book about possums and I liked the way they walked on mossy logs and peered out from holes in trees and how their paws looked like little human hands. I tried saying it without a lisp. Possum, I whispered, putting my tongue behind my teeth the way I'd learned in speech therapy. Mossy possum paws. I'd be ready next time Jordana pointed to Sam Simpson and said, "Who's that, Fattifer? I can't remember his name." She made me nervouse, and it came out Tham Thimthon no matter how much I'd practice at home.
I didn't want to think about Jordana, so I opened my lunch box where I knew there was a plastic bag half full of crackers that I'd taken from a first-grader's lunch when she wasn't looking. Stealing food was a bad habit, more of a compusion really, and not only did I want a snack but also I needed to destroy the evidence, a process I enjoyed: holding the crackers in my mouth and feeling the hard, salty crunchiness dissolve into a slightly sweet mush. When I reached in my lunch box to get them, I found a small white cardboard box that I knew for a fact had not been there at lunch.
I slipped the lid off the box and lifted up a small square of cotton to see a ring with a silvery band and sparkly blue stone. Underneath the ring was a piece of paper that had been folded, folded, folded, and folded again to fit the box. I opened it. It was a drawing of a house with a fence around it, and a tree. Pencil-line rays from a round sun beamed down on two stick figures holding hands. Beneath the picture in a messy second-grade scrawl, it read:
To Jennifer,
I love you.
From Cameron Quick.
My mom got back in the car then, tossing her books onto the passenger seat and slamming the door. I watched her eyes in the rearview mirror as she asked, "Whatcha got there, kiddo?"
I closed my hand around the ring. "Nothing." (pg 6-7)

What I really think:
It took me a few chapters to get into this book, but then I was really hooked. I think that most of us have vivid memories of people and events from our childhood that in some way have shaped our lives. And as a teenager, when you are trying to decide what kind of adult you are going to be, you can wonder what to do with the feelings you have about your childhood self.
I like the way Zarr deals with Jenna's eating problems. The descriptions of how much she likes food are so convincing I started thinking more about how food tastes and feels myself. I began to really understand the comfort Jenna gets from eating. But when Jenna isn't eating for comfort she does try to stay thin in a reasonably healthy way: eating small portions of good food and exercising. I'm glad she has found a way to be happier with herself without going to the other extreme and not eating.

The Traitor Game

Author: B. R. Collins

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Publication Year: 2008

Most of the readers will be: Late middle school and early high school boys.

Reader's advisory: For another book that contains an ancient kingdom try Bloodline by Katy Moran.

Summary:
Francis has always been nice to Michael. They meet on Saturdays to draw maps and make up stories about their imaginary country: Evgard. Michael is sure that Francis is his friend, until he finds a note in his locker that says, "I know where Aracaster is." Aracaster is part of Evgard and only he and Francis know about it. Michael is forced to conclude that Francis has told someone about Evgard. Maybe Francis isn't really his friend. Maybe he has been laughing at Michael behind his back all along. After Michael was beaten up by bullies at his last school he promised himself he would never be a victim again. No one will laugh at him, not even Francis.
Meanwhile, Argent has been captured by the Duke of Aracaster. Most of the Mereish prisoners are kept in the dungeon, but Argent lives in the castle as a slave to the Duke. Then, the Duke's son, Columen, befriends him, and even swindles him away from his father. When Mereish fighters attack the castle, whith whom will Argent side?

My favorite passage:

Judas floors don't exist in the real world. At least, if they did, Michael had never heard of them, and he definitely hadn't seen anyone fall through one. But for a second he thought he knew how it would feel: the black, sick terror of falling, knowing that the best you could hope for at the bottom was cold stone, and the worst . . . well, if you were lucky you didn't have time to think about the worst. In his imagination he'd made people dance pavanes and galliards on the great Judas floor at Calston, but it was only now that he really understood the horror of it. One moment you were there, in the middle of your galliard, hopping around as gracefully as you could, and then -
He remembered, irrelevantly, that there was a net underneath the floor at Calston to break your fall, so for a second you'd almost think it was some twisted practical joke. Until you saw the vipers nesting in the ropes near your face . . . (pg 16)

What I really think:
I like to read before I go to bed and this was one of those books that isn't so good for that. It actually makes you more awake and kind of stressed out. There are so many issues here: bullying, friendship, homosexuality...
Bullying is a really difficult issue and I'm not sure Collins has cleared it up. Francis tells Michael at one point that he wants to see him stand up for himself. When Michael truly does stand up for himself (spoiler) he gets pushed through a window. He feels better about himself, but he still gets injured.
The friendship issues are important ones. Teenagers can break friendships just as quickly as they make them, and I like Collins's message that you can't undo the damage you have done, but maybe you can still reconcile with a friend you have hurt.
I like that the fact that one of the characters is gay is a side issue. It isn't the reason that bad stuff happens initially, but it is the reason stuff gets worse. This book isn't about being gay, but it does illustrate the need for some sensitivity.
The intermittent chapters that take place in Aracaster are a nice touch. At first I was annoyed that I was being dragged away from the "real" story. But ultimately I enjoyed those chapters just as much as the chapters about Michael and Francis.

The Knife of Never Letting Go

Author: Patrick Ness

Publisher: Walker Books

Publication Year: 2008

Most of the readers will be: Late middle school and early high school boys and girls.

Reader's advisory: Try Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles for short stories that take place on a recently colonized Mars.

Summary:
Todd Hewitt has grown up in Prentisstown, the only surviving colony on New World. During a war with the local aliens, called Spackle, the aliens infected the animals with a germ that made them all start talking, and infected the humans with a germ that made all their thoughts heard. The Noise germ drove people crazy. It killed half the men and all the women.
In Prentisstown, a boy becomes a man at thirteen. Todd is the last boy in Prentisstown and he is one month away from his thirteenth birthday. His parents both died from the Noise germ and he lives with friends of theirs, Ben and Cillian.
When he and his dog Manchee go into the swamp one morning to gather apples Todd comes across something he has never experienced before. Quiet. There is a quiet spot in the swamp and it isn't natural. Todd tries to keep the quiet out of his Noise as he walks back through town, but somehow it escapes.
Now Todd is running. Because he and that quiet both mean something to Prentisstown, and the men don't want either of them to get away.

My favorite passage:

The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say.
About anything.
"Need a poo, Todd."
"Shut up, Manchee."
"Poo. Poo, Todd."
"I said shut it."
We're walking across the wild fields south-east of town, those ones that slope down to the river and head on towards the swamp. Ben's sent me to pick him some swamp apples and he's made me take Manchee with me, even tho we all know Cillian only bought him to stay on Mayor Prentiss's good side and so suddenly here's this brand new dog as a present for my birthday last year when I never said I wanted any dog, that what I said I wanted was for Cillian to finally fix the fissionbike so I wouldn't have to walk every forsaken place in this stupid town, but oh, no, happy birthday, Todd, here's a brand new puppy, Todd, and even tho you don't want him, even tho you never asked for him, guess who has to feed him and train him and wash him and take him for walks and listen to him jabber now that he's got old enough for the talking germ to set his mouth moving? Guess who?
"Poo," Manchee barks quietly to himself. "Poo, poo, poo."
"Just have yer stupid poo and quit yapping about it." (pg 3-4)

What I really think:
I'm kind of obsessed with this book. I'm kind of upset that the next Chaos Walking book isn't coming out until May. I don't want to say too much about it and I couldn't really share a passage except from the very beginning because it's full of questions and finding out the answers is part of the fun. I wish I could say you have all the answers by the end. But you don't. I suppose that's why book two is called The Ask and the Answer.
What can I tell you? This novel experiments with how different people, and different groups of people, handle situations they never imagined they would be in. How Right and Wrong get all mixed up and you can still do what's Right when everyone else is doing Wrong, but it is easy to see how so many people get involved in doing Wrong.
At one point, a character says that Noise is just information and too much information is a bad thing. I would never call this novel an allegory for our "information age," but it is not unlikely that Ness is making a passing comment on our current overabundance of information. Just remember that the cure for too much information is a good librarian to help you sort through it. ;)