Review: Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters

Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters by Meredith Zeitlin is a great comedy about the hijinks of the freshman year, when it seems there are endless possibilities to reinvent yourself only to discover it's not nearly as easy as one thinks.

Synopsis: Kelsey Finkelstein is fourteen and FRUSTRATED. Every time she tries to live up to her awesome potential, her plans are foiled – by her impossible parents, her annoying little sister, and life in general. But with her first day of high school coming up, Kelsey is positive that things are going to change. Enlisting the help of her three best friends — sweet and quiet Em, theatrical Cass, and wild JoJo — Kelsey gets ready to rebrand herself and make the kind of mark she knows is her destiny. 


Things start out great - her arch-nemesis has moved across the country, giving Kelsey the perfect opportunity to stand out on the soccer team and finally catch the eye of her long-time crush. But soon enough, an evil junior’s thirst for revenge, a mysterious photographer, and a series of other catastrophes make it clear that just because KELSEY has a plan for greatness… it doesn’t mean the rest of the world is in on it. (Goodreads.com)


Let me just say it plain and simple: this book is funny! If you have a soft spot for the humor in Brent Crawford's Carter Finally Gets It, well then hop on board the Kelsey Finkelstein train! She wants her freshman year to a success on every level and she'll do anything she can to make it happen. Unfortunately, that leads to some situations that prove funny to the reader but are definitely not Kelsey's ideal freshman experience. That being said, I really liked how Kelsey was open to so many experiences. She truly didn't let anything hold her back, even when the situations showed her in not the best of moments. But that didn't stop her from trying soccer, theater, heck, even the newspaper!

I totally admit to having a rather juvenile sense of humor so this book totally worked for me in that respect. There is a scene involving a beard during theater that had me cracking up nonstop. It was absolutely hilarious and told in a very personable, droll fashion. That describes Kelsey's voice somewhat. She has all these grand ideas that she pursues with enthusiasm and they don't always work out but somehow she takes it in stride, chalking it up to another experience.

I also liked that Kelsey and her friends didn't totally lose touch with each other during the course of the book. That's not to say it was all sunshine and roses because it wasn't but it was nice to see this core group of friends still having something in common and not totally going their separate ways even as they made new friends and became a bit more independent of each other.

This is a very lighthearted book but that being said, there are scenes of drinking and a lot of talk of sex. I'd like to be able to say you could sell this to an seventh or eighth grader but the scene where Kelsey pukes because of alcohol will not be for every reader. It's a definite case of having to know your reader. The cute cover is going to grab many readers though and hopefully they'll learn a positive lesson from Kelsey's experience which is I'm sure what the author was hoping for. You can also sell this on the sweet romance which is not a focus of the story but is definitely there. Kelsey crushes on a photographer gone awry which leads to even more humor in this story.

Kelsey is a great character to spend time with. Zeitlin has a really great sense of humor and it appears in the book. Additionally, Kelsey is close to her family, for all her histrionics about how her mom fails to appreciate her and invades her privacy, etc. Her parents have an active role in her life and that shows throughout the course of the story.

If you read and liked Brent Crawford's Carter books or Don Calame's Swim the Fly, I truly think Meredith Zeitlin is the female equivalent to those stories. Kelsey has quite the freshman year of high school filled with mistakes, excitement, surprises, and growth. I'd love to see another adventure from Kelsey. I know I would devour it and I think this book is going to have great appeal for younger teen readers. Meredith Zeitlin, you've come into the YA world with a bang.

Tomorrow, look for a guest post from Meredith Zeitlin!

Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters is available on March 1 from G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Other reviews:
YA Reads reviews Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters
Books from a Shelf reviews Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters
The Cheap Reader reviews Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters

ARC provided by publisher/agent.

Making a run for the Printz!

Remember how I'm running for the Michael L. Printz Award committee for 2014?? Well, now you can find out a bit more about WHY I'm running. YALSA Blog has posted an interview with me about my qualifications and why I think the Printz is so important.

I hope you'll head on over there to take a look and consider voting for me in the upcoming ALA elections. And if you have questions, please feel free to contact me personally.

Picture Book Saturday!

Did you know that March 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts? I'm betting a lot of you were Girl Scouts as little kids. I know I was! I still have all my badges to admire. And yeah, a lot of it is about the cookies for me now (Samoas, YUM!) I still fondly recall my days in the Girl Scouts. I had excellent troop leaders.

So, what does this have to do with Picture Book Saturday? Well, there are a lot of new books coming out this year to commemorate the life of Juliette Gordon Low. Here are two recent ones that have come through in my Baker and Taylor order.

Here Come the Girl Scouts! by Shana Corey with illustrations by Hadley Hooper. This is a great nonfiction picture book detailing the life of Juliette Gordon Low. I absolutely love Hadley Hooper's illustrations, they really make the text shine. The book does a great job of weaving the details of Juliette Gordon Low's life into her ideas of the Girl Scouts, with frequent Girl Scout sayings adorning the pages. The end features a information about the legacy of Juliette Gordon Low along with all the sources the author used. This is a small book but it really works well. There is a great melding of text and illustration, leaving you nostalgic for your own time in the Girl Scouts.

For a more in depth look at Juliette Gordon Low, be sure to read First Girl Scout: The Life of Juliette Gordon Low by Ginger Wadsworth. This is a great biography about the founder of the Girl Scouts and I can see it being used in many reports in the future. I loved the opening of each chapter as it showcases a different Girl Scout badge. This is not a picture book (despite it being Picture Book Saturday) but I was really impressed with the quality of this biography showcasing Gordon Low's life. She was a phenomenal woman and the legacy she has left behind is about more than cookies. This is really a book about Juliette Gordon Low however and much of the book focuses on her life before she founded the Girl Scouts. I found it very interesting myself but if you have readers who are more interested in the Girl Scout angle, it takes a bit of reading to get there.

Both of these books are quality reading with different ways of examining the legacy that Juliette Gordon Low left behind. 

Picture Book Saturday is a feature from A Patchwork of Books! Check out her blog to see what she is talking about today.

Things I Like! (05)

This week I've really been in a re-reading kick, specifically romance author Kristan Higgins who writes some of my favorite contemporary romance books.

It all started when I got her upcoming April 2012 release, Somebody to Love, from Netgalley. It was so, so good and it featured previous characters from another of her books that I just had to re-read that book too (that book being The Next Best Thing).

Lately, re-reading my favorite romance books has been way more rewarding than reading new romance or YA books. I guess I'm just in that kind of reading phase right now. I never take enough time to re-read so I'm going to enjoy it. (Though yeah, I do feel guilty about ignoring all the new, never been read, books I have waiting for me.)

Do you re-read books? What's your favorite re-read?

Audiobook review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, read by Wil Wheaton

So, this is probably the most fun I've had with a book in quite awhile! Ernest Cline's Ready Player One is a great book for the nerd in all of us and actor Wil Wheaton (yes, THAT Wil Wheaton) is the perfect narrator for this story.

Synopsis: It's the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place. 


Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets. 


And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune--and remarkable power--to whoever can unlock them. 


For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday's riddles are based in the pop culture he loved--that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday's icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes's oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig. 


And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle. 


Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt--among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life--and love--in the real world he's always been so desperate to escape. (Goodreads.com)


Now, make no mistake, this book has its flaws. The Book Smugglers review of Ready Player One most succinctly points out the flaws, the biggest that stands out for me is how Cline basically ignores any and all female fantasy writers which is a travesty but that being said, I still had a great time with this book. I listened to it while working and while traveling in my car to visit family and frankly, I didn't want to stop driving. I'm not sure whose brilliant idea it was to get Wil Wheaton to narrate this book but it was pure genius. Considering how involved in the world of fandom and "nerds" Wheaton is, he seems like the only choice to read this book and wow, does he make his mark. Some actors are not meant to read audio books, it's just fact. I've listened to some audio books narrated by famous actors where it is an abysmal listening experience. Not so with Ready Player One and Wil Wheaton. Wil Wheaton brings eighteen year old Wade Watts to life through sarcasm, nerdery, and excitement over the contest. And not just Wade. Wheaton is not afraid to change his voice, to be dynamic and robust in his narration. There is a part where he is voicing a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the British touch is just right.

There is A LOT of exposition in this book. A lot. I think if I had been reading this rather than listening, I would have ended up skimming chunks of the text. But with listening, I was engaged because Wheaton makes even the exposition important and interesting. He is NOT a dull, monotonous narrator by any means and I was really thrilled to hear him seemingly get just as excited as Wade over some of the 1980s pop culture and trivia. Narrators can easily lose me in exposition but I was hanging on every word of this book.

Ready Player One is a 2012 Alex Award winner and there is no doubting why. This is a great quest novel. It's about friendship and reaching a huge, momentous goal. Yes, the villains are static, yes there really isn't a whole lot of character depth in this book but it is nonetheless hugely engaging. Fast-paced, filled with humor and sarcasm, plenty of swearing, a lot of crushing on a certain female Gunter, the chance to be greater than your parents before you, and the chance to put down the man. While this book really only touches very lightly on heavier matters, it makes for an extremely readable story nonetheless. I tend to love stories with character development and emotional impact. While this book has some character growth, it is truly about plot momentum, about story and setting. The Oasis is this amazing other world. It is leaps and bounds better than say, Second Life, which FINALLY seems to have died out. Wade's journey in the Oasis and the emerging story is where reader interest lies, NOT in ruminating on why people are much more interested in being part of the Oasis than real life.

If you like video games, the 1980s, movies and obscure facts, give this book a try. I cannot claim to be any real expert on the 1980s but I do know my movies fairly well and I enjoyed the references to movies I have seen and enjoyed. Ernest Cline did his research that much is obvious because this book brims with both the well known and the obscure. Wil Wheaton adds another layer of enjoyment to the book and I highly recommend listening to the audio rather than just reading it. There is something rather meta about having him narrate, considering his own role in Ready Player One (and not just as narrator). This is a very cinematic book! There are huge, grandiose villains, sweeping adventures where one has to use any and all knowledge at hand, and fun friendships formed along the way. Ready Player One is a climactic adventure and Wil Wheaton throws himself wholly into the experience, relishing the narration experience. It is quite obvious he took a lot of joy in the production of this audio book and in turn, readers are going to have just as much joy in the finished product.

Ready Player One is an unabridged production by Random House Audio. It is 13 compact discs for a total of fifteen and a half hours of listening.

Borrowed from local public library.

Review: There You'll Find Me by Jenny B. Jones

I live in and work for a fairly conservative community. I get many requests for stories for "Christian girls". And honestly, this is not my normal milieu as a reader but I am really trying to reach outside my boundaries to better serve my community and that means trying to read more Christian teen fiction. There You'll Find Me by Jenny B. Jones may be marketed as a Christian fiction book for teens but there is a lot in this story that any teen reader is going to enjoy.

Synopsis: Grief brought Finley to Ireland. LOVE WILL LEAD HER HOME. Finley Sinclair is not your typical eighteen-year-old. She's witty, tough, and driven. With an upcoming interview at the Manhattan music conservatory, Finley needs to compose her audition piece. But her creativity disappeared with the death of her older brother, Will.
She decides to study abroad in Ireland so she can follow Will's travel journal. It's the place he felt closest to God, and she's hopeful being there will help her make peace over losing him. So she agrees to an exchange program and boards the plane.
Beckett Rush, teen heartthrob and Hollywood bad boy, is flying to Ireland to finish filming his latest vampire movie. On the flight, he meets Finley. She's the one girl who seems immune to his charm. Undeterred, Beckett convinces her to be his assistant in exchange for his help as a tour guide.
Once in Ireland, Finley starts to break down. The loss of her brother and the pressure of school, her audition, and whatever it is that is happening between her and Beckett, leads her to a new and dangerous vice. When is God going to show up for her in this emerald paradise?
Then she experiences something that radically changes her perspective on life. Could it be God convincing her that everything she's been looking for has been with her all along? (Goodreads.com)

What I liked about this book, and what I think teen girls in particular are going to relate to, is Finley's slow breakdown as she tries to deal with all the pressure in her life. She's being courted by a celebrity (think Robert Pattinson but less amusing ), school is another pressure she deals with, as is her constant practice sessions for her upcoming audition to the New York Conservatory. And oh yeah, trying to retrace her brother Will's footsteps. Will is dead but he lives on in Finley's life through her grief about him and she is hard pressed to let it go. Much of this book deals with her relationship to God in terms of her relationship with Will, her grief, and the process of finally letting it go.

Readers will enjoy the lush Irish setting as Finley is studying abroad. Getting to know the various residents of Abbeyglen, spending time sight-seeing, and dealing with a school bully, a crush, making new friends, and the pressures of the future all combine to make this book readers are going to respond to. That being said, this is a definite Christian fiction book and Finley seriously questions her relationship with God. She is dealing with seeing someone dying right before her eyes and that too makes her question where God is leading her. A nun becomes a bit of a guide to Finley and helps her see that prayer is a way to reach God and that even though she feels empty, as if he has abandoned her, he is in fact right there, waiting for her to reconnect. This is not light on the religious message but I didn't find it to be a turn-off. To me, teenagers are at the point in their lives where they are questioning everything and everyone so it felt natural for Finley to be somewhat repelled and scared of her relationship with God, to distrust Him.

And intertwined with all of this is Finley's foray into an eating disorder. I felt this was actually really well done in the story. As Finley starts to feel more and more pressure, as her relationship with God changes, she finds comfort in the emptiness of her stomach. The signs are clearly laid out for readers and things get progressively worse as the story continues. This is not an eating disorder story however; there is a lot more to this book than Finley's trouble with food.

The only thing for me that was a turn-off was the epilogue which rang rather... falsely cheerful. Finley's journey into healing is just beginning by the end of the book so the abrupt switch to the epilogue where she is seems much happier and more resilient was a bit of a shocker for me. All in all though, There You'll Find Me proved to be an engaging foray into Christian teen fiction for me. Religious or not, teens are going to relate to Finley's struggles, her need to achieve, and how down to earth she is in her love for her family and her brother. I obviously need to read more in order to continue to my readers' advisory for my teen customers but I definitely found this to be a great start. I think this is a thoughtful story that teen readers, no matter what denomination or even lack of interest in religion, will find complicated and engaging.

Other reviews:
Much Loved Books reviews There You'll Find Me
Book Review Sisters reviews There You'll Find Me
Born Bookish reviews There You'll Find Me

Reviewed from public library book.

Review: Keep Holding On by Susane Colasanti

Keep Holding On by Susane Colasanti is the latest book that tackles bullying in high school. It is a very emotional book as warrants the subject  but also carries a certain "after school special" feeling to it that is rather burdensome to the entire storyline.

Synopsis: Between Noelle’s difficult home life and the bullying she endures at school, all she wants is to get out of her small town. Noelle would give anything to be with Julian Porter. But staying with her emotionally distant boyfriend is safer. When things heat up between Noelle and Julian, she has to decide whether she can be her true self with him. (Goodreads.com)


Every reader is going to sympathize with Noelle. You would be very cold-hearted if you didn't feel sympathy for her. She has a secret boyfriend who wants nothing to do with her outside of random make-out sessions. Her mother is awful and only concerned with herself and every day at school Noelle is assaulted mentally and physically and no one does anything about it. Believe me, I felt awful for Noelle. But.. that did not make this story all that strong really. Colasanti is a very, very readable author. This is a relatively short book and has high reluctant reader appeal: short chapter, a romance, a great best friend, and a character many teens are going to relate to. That being said, I really felt the message of anti-bullying was so heavy-handed and blatant. This is not a bad thing but it also, for me, did not do the story any favors.

Honestly, as I was reading, instead of envisioning the character of Noelle, I felt like I was reading Susane Colasanti's teenage years in a book, especially as the story progressed. Noelle became less and the authorial voice just seemed to overtake the story with messages so heavily laden with being unique, standing out, and that being different is good that it all felt forced. None of those messages are bad of course but it would be great if they had been worked into the text in a way that was not quite so right in front of your face. There was also a very negative "small town, suburban area" message to this book which I found to be quite distasteful. I realize that the suburbs are not for everyone and in fact a lot of teenagers do want to escape them but I feel like it was not Noelle who wanted out of the suburbs but Colasanti who wanted out of the suburbs. Yes, there are definitely negatives to the suburban life but there are also positives too.

There is also a plot involving Noelle's best friend, Sherae, who was raped by her boyfriend. It is only finally addressed as rape towards the end of the book but it is clear that what Sherae has been having nightmares about, why she has been avoiding her ex-boyfriend, is clearly rape. There is a bit of an attempt at the end to say that Sherae is getting the help she needs but it didn't seem like the boy who raped her was facing any consequences. This plot was just barely fit in amidst Noelle's issues and it really got short-shrift because the story really was not long enough or frankly complex enough to handle the very scary and complex issue of rape.

While I definitely breezed through this book and I definitely like Colasanti's stories, I have many reservations about Keep Holding On. There was just too much of Colasanti in the book. Noelle had so many issues going on but by the time the book was over I felt Noelle was a bit of a Mary Sue. She had this perfect, amazing writing talent that she just seemingly discovered. She had this really handsome boy who wanted her despite everything and Noelle's relationship with her mother was strange and was fairly glossed over by the end of the book. After years of being abused by her classmates, she finds her confidence out of nowhere. It just felt all very abbreviated and too fast.

When it comes down to it though, teens are going to enjoy this book and even though it didn't all work for me, this book is going to fly off the shelves and that is one of the most important criteria I have when purchasing a book for my library.

Keep Holding On comes out in June 2012 from Viking.

ARC from Around the World Tours.