1. I am a nerd, and
2. I heart YA.

The books I had to decide between were worlds apart this year—one historical fiction and the other a fantasy. I’ll start with reviews of each one, but if you can’t bear the suspense any longer feel free to skip to the end of this post for the decision…

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Alligator Bayou

Author: Donna Jo Napoli
Summary: 14-year-old Calogero is a Sicilian boy who’s lost his mother, so he’s sent to work with other Sicilians in a small Louisiana town during the late 1890s. At that time, Italians weren’t accepted as equals by whites, and being friends with blacks was frowned upon. But that doesn’t stop Calogero from having a crush on a beautiful girl who happens to be black.

What I Loved: This would be an excellent choice for kids who are studying this time period in their history class. Early on, a feeling of what life was like in that world settles into your bones. Kids would learn way more from one good piece of fiction like this than from memorizing important dates and names for weeks on end.

So what I loved most about this book is that it takes an obscure slice of America’s history—how five Italian immigrants were brutally murdered—and serves it up for us to mull over.

The language was spare throughout—not too flowery or overly descriptive, but just enough to get a vivid image across. Here’s a snippet for you, from a scene with Calogero and the girl he has a crush on:

She sets down the lantern glass and puts her hands lightly on my cheeks.

I touch the center of her back at the waist. Just a hint. She moves to me, natural as water running downhill.

What I Didn’t Love: The story gets off to a slow start, or at least slower than I prefer. I didn’t really get a sense that the true stakes were life and death until about halfway through the book. More hinting in the beginning about those high stakes would have helped pique my interest.

But I’m glad I stuck with it and finished.

One more minor issue that tripped up my reading was the way that background information was sometimes delivered through dialogue. In some places, that dialogue came off a little too speech-y for my taste. As in: “Ahem. Now listen to me, while I will tell you everything I know about that topic.”

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
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Evil?

Author: Timothy Carter
Summary: Stu is a gay teen living in a devoutly religious small town. He also summons a demon on occasion to chat. But none of that is why everyone in town hates him. The trouble all started after Stu’s little brother caught Stu in the act of pleasuring himself and announced it at church.

What I Loved: I wish there were more YA books that explore the nature of religion, so I was glad to read such a playful attempt at doing that.

I also loved that what gets Stu in trouble had nothing to do with him being gay. The townspeople were actually surprisingly okay with his orientation—that is, surprising for a small religious town.

What I Didn’t Love: I don’t have a problem with fantasy or absurd storylines. (In fact, I have a fond place in my weird little heart for books like Lips Touch and Pretty Monsters and Jack Tumor.)

But the fantastical twists and turns in this book did not make a believer out of me.

The humor didn’t exactly convert me to fandom, either. Instead of laughing or even smiling at the jokes, I groaned. Like with this one:

I did think I was better than most people in this town. When you’re a gay teenager with a brain among a community that expects God to “Rapture” them at any given moment, you can’t help but feel that way. If that makes me a snob, then say hello to my upturned nostrils!

I like my humor fresh and original. To me, the humor in this book was not either of those things.

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The Decision

The book that will continue to the next round is…

.
.
.

Alligator Bayou

If you’re a numbers sort of person, here’s the ratings breakdown:

Alligator Bayou: 3/5
Evil?: 2/5

To see how Alligator Bayou fares in the next round of the tournament, keep an eye on There’s a Book for Danielle’s decision.

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Title: Travel Far, Pay No Fare
Author: Anne Lindbergh
Category: Fiction, Middle Grade
Rating: 2/5
Why I Read It: Because you told me to! This one’s been on the suggestion list since March, but it took a while for it to arrive via interlibrary loan.

Summary: 12-year-old Owen moves to Vermont when his mom decides to marry her widowed brother-in-law. Owen’s tasked with watching his 9-year-old cousin Parsley, but she keeps disappearing for long periods of time.

Review: I loved the premise of this book—that you can travel into your favorite books. (Tangent: Where would you go if you could? Hogwarts for me, hands down.)

But as fun as the premise was, I don’t think the writing held its own. Issues ranged from too much exclamation to a play-by-play of every thought and feeling the main character had. Here’s an example from a good ways into the book:

I’ve seen movies that had me close to tears, but even the saddest of them was nothing compared to this. Jody was hurting. I could tell! And I hurt with him: a tight, heavy kind of hurt that swelled inside my chest and behind my jaw. What did it mean? Was it because Flag was still there and condemned to die? Should I knock on the door and ask?

However, this book was written in 1992 so it’s probably not fair to hold it to my modern reading tastes.

I did like that the family conflict was front and center in the story, along with the parents. It heightened the tension and made it more realistic.

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Powell’s | Amazon

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Summary: When Angela’s rebellion crosses the line, her parents ship her off to Hidden Oak boarding school, where she’s lumped in with all the other dangerous girls whose families have given up on them.

Review: The premise of this book and its first few pages pulled me in, but the rest of the book was predictable. I never connected with the main character, but I’m not sure why that is.

I do know that I wanted Angela to question herself more than she did. For a character with supposedly low self-esteem, she was all bluster and outrage most of the time. In a setting where the faculty and doctors were playing mind games with the girls, I expected Angela to wonder if she was off her rocker or at least have a serious moment of self-doubt.

If you’ve read this one, can you help me pinpoint why it was hard to connect with Angela? Or did you enjoy it more than I did? Leave a comment either way!

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
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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?

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

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Review: I picked this up on a whim at the library. (Okay, I admit it. I was hungry and the cover looked yummy.)

I wasn’t impressed. The main character is 12 years old, but she doesn’t sound it. Sometimes the way she spoke sounded like a grown-up to me. This made it hard for me to connect to her as a character.

It felt like the heavy stuff with the parents kind of came out of nowhere. We know the dad is rarely around, but that storyline picked up some crazy steam fast. It didn’t feel genuine to me. The resolution of that storyline was a little too optimistic to seem genuine, too.

And this is petty, but all the dropped Gs from just about every character annoyed the crap out of me—darlin’ and gettin’ and speakin’. Enough already.

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

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Review: This book was alright, but I expected more from an Indie Next pick.

The plot was engaging, but I had trouble connecting with the main character. The point of view would switch from one paragraph to the next with no warning, and she didn’t always sound like a 17-year-old girl. Here she is talking to a guy a couple years older than her:

“You will make that happen. Isn’t that so?”

It took him a minute. “Yes,” he said finally. “It’s so.”

When’s the last time you heard a teenager talking like that?

Some other things that stood out to me:

• A lot of the dialogue read as choppy due to too much standing or sitting or looking out the window in between each line.
• I thought it was odd that an issue with the best friend’s boyfriend is given so much attention at the beginning, but it’s resolved “off screen” later on and mentioned just as an aside.
• I didn’t feel like the main character was really taking the tasks all that seriously, and I was a little disappointed in the resolution of that storyline. I guess I expected something more clever and less literal.

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

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