Title: Going Going
Author: Naomi Shihab Nye
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Why I Read It: I read the plot summary online and liked the sound of it.

Summary: 16-year-old Florrie works at her family’s restaurant and gets outraged at the chain stores stomping all over the small businesses like hers.

Stopped on Page: 46
Why I Stopped: This book shoves the “issue” down your throat, making it no fun at all to read. I always try to support independent businesses over chains, and even I was annoyed by do-gooder Florrie and her self-righteous rants.

Here, it’s her birthday and she’s announcing her wish:

“Okay, guys, this year my wish is…hey familia, everyone listening? My wish is that none of you will visit or patronize any franchise establishment for the rest of this calendar year, starting today! That equals sixteen weeks, one week for each year of my life. This will be a serious project. We will support independent businesses for all our needs, as much as possible. Okay? Agreed?”

She goes on to quote Ralph Nader to her family. I’m not kidding. Nothing against Ralph Nader, but c’mon. This character is nowhere near realistic.

And on the completely trivial side, this book has too many exclamation points and too much italics for emphasis.

Should I have kept going? Or was I right to stop?

Note: As an aspiring author, I respect the extraordinary amount of effort that goes into writing a book. I did not write this review in order to be unfair or negative about the book. My goal is simply to articulate why the book wasn’t for me.

Title: Jellicoe Road
Author: Melina Marchetta
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 5/5
Summary: At a boarding school in the Australian bush country, Taylor Markham has been selected as the reluctant leader to represent the school in negotiations with their rivals, the Townies and the Cadets. But when the only adult in her life disappears and Taylor finds out the Cadet leader knows her better than she’d like, will she be able to hold it together and protect her kids from retaliation?

Review: When I finished Jellicoe Road, I smiled and set it down on my nightstand. Not 30 seconds later, I picked it back up and started reading it again from the beginning. The last time I did that was with the fourth Harry Potter. Actually, that might be the only other time I’ve ever done that.

So yeah, you could say I sorta liked this book…if for no other reason than I loved it. I actually convinced my hubby to read it, and he reads like one book every 6 months so it better be good if it’s going to join that exclusive club.

This book is the type of book that’s so incredibly well written so as to make me completely question my ability to ever achieve something even 1% as good.

This is just from page 2, and there’s more where that came from, I promise. The narrator is talking about having survived a car crash where her parents were driving.

Someone asked us later, “Didn’t you wonder why no one came across you sooner?”

Did I wonder?

When you see your parents zipped up in black body bags on the Jellicoe Road like they’re some kind of garbage, don’t you know?

Wonder dies.

But don’t take that one snippet to mean this book is all depressing. It’s not at all. It’s heartbreaking, yes, but also hopeful. And funny.

I’m going to sleep on it, but this one might just make my list of top 10 all-time YA favorites. And thank you to whomever submitted a suggestion for me to read Saving Francesca. I definitely will.

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Audience Pick!

Title: Scat
Author: Carl Hiaasen
Category: Fiction, Middle Grade
Rating: 2/5
Summary: Nick and Marta—not to mention everyone else at school—hate their biology teacher, Mrs. Starch. But when Mrs. Starch disappears during a school field trip and nobody seems all that concerned, Nick and Marta realize it’s up to them to find her.

Review: I liked Hoot and Flush, but I never really got into Hiaasen’s latest middle-grade novel. It could be that I’m getting pickier as I refine my YA-nnabe reading skills.

Things I didn’t like:

• Flat characters—Nick never came to life for me, and Marta mostly just got on my nerves.
• Melodramatic at times—A character gets hurt at one point and Marta’s response just made me roll my eyes. I’d quote it, but I don’t want to give away too much. It’s on page 337, if you want to look it up.
• Weird not-a-romance—Something was going on between Nick and Marta that seemed like it was supposed to be about them realizing they liked each other. But it was so infrequently referenced and never resolved in any way that it was just…weird.

Am I being too picky? I’m sure lots of kids will read this book and enjoy it. But if I’m going to become a better writer, maybe this is the path I have to go down.

Here’s a small example of what bothered me, so you can decide for yourself. Nick is being questioned by a cop after Mrs. Starch disappears:

“Let’s go back to the day before the field trip,” said the deputy. “I want to ask you about something that happened in class between Mrs. Starch and a boy named Duane Scrod.”

Nick felt the muscles in his neck stiffen. “She pointed a pencil at him, and he bit it in half.”

“Didn’t he also threaten her?”

“What do you mean?”

The deputy said, “Some of your classmates remember Duane saying something like, ‘You’re gonna be sorry.’ And then Mrs. Starch saying, ‘Is that a threat?’ Do you recall such a conversation?”

Nick recalled it quite clearly. He also recalled worrying that [Duane] might be serious. Nick felt uneasy telling this to the deputy, because he couldn’t be sure what Duane Scrod had meant.

But Nick’s father had taught him to always be truthful, no matter now hard it might be.

Those last two paragraphs are what got to me. First of all, this extremely memorable kid-biting-a-teacher’s-pencil scene just happened a couple days and less than 50 pages before this point, so don’t tell me that Nick remembers it. And don’t tell me that Nick feels uneasy. Make me figure that out by what he says or does.

But the clincher is the last paragraph. If I’m being truthful, it makes me want to gag. On what planet do kids think like that?

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Audience Pick!

Title: The Graveyard Book
Author: Neil Gaiman
Category: Fiction, Middle Grade
Rating: 3.5/5
Summary: An 18-month-old baby survives a brutal attack on his family by escaping to a nearby graveyard. There, he finds a new family and a new name, and the graveyard becomes his home.

Review: I don’t usually like dark books like this, but this one is so well done I couldn’t help but enjoy it.

How could an opening possibly hook you more than this?

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife. The knife had a handle of polished black bone, and a blade finer and sharper than any razor. If it sliced you, you might not even know you had been cut, not immediately.

The knife had done almost everything it was brought to that house to do, and both the blade and the handle were wet.

Yowza. The book lightens up after that opening scene, but it’s all relative—the boy is living in a graveyard.

If you like dark stories, you’ll love this book.

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Title: Headlong
Author: Kathe Koja
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3.5/5
Summary: Lily Noble has always gone to private school. In her sophomore year, a misfit named Hazel shows up and makes Lily rethink the way she’s been doing things her whole life.

Review: The back-and-forth nature of this book took a little time for me to get used to. The chapters alternate between snippets from the beginning of the school year and the end of the year. A few times, I got confused about whether it was a “later” chapter or a “before” chapter, but I chalk that up to my own work-induced lack of sleep during the week I was reading this one.

I liked that this book doesn’t hit you over the head with what Lily’s feeling. You have to work out on your own what’s going on with her.

I also liked how Lily—who’s always just gone with the flow—finally changes course and questions the ways of her affluent world.

Not a standout for me, but still an enjoyable read.

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