Teen

Review: If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan

| Tasha

Farizan_IfYouCouldBeMine_REV.indd

If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan

This debut novel from an Iranian-American author takes a look at what it is like to be a teen lesbian in Iran.  Sahar loves her friend Nasrin intensely.  They have been friends since childhood and Sahar has loved her since she was six.  They steal kisses when their parents are not around and long to be able to plan their lives together.  But in a country where women can be arrested and beaten for showing their elbows in public, their love is not allowed.  When Nasrin is betrothed to a young doctor, Sahar desperately looks for a solution that would allow them to be together.   She discovers that in Iran, you can have a sex change if you declare yourself to be transgendered and be considered fully the opposite sex.  So Sahar sets out to do just that, become a man so that she can marry Nasrin.  As Sahar’s plan develops, she has to make some serious choices, ones that will affect her for the rest of her life.

Farizan’s writing is clear and beautiful.  She adroitly shows the society of Iran, its treatment of women, the fear of the police, and the danger that the characters are living with.  The portrayal of their love is tender and exploratory, as it begins to crumble, one can see Sahar’s love for Nasrin remain even when their closeness begins to evaporate under the stress of the upcoming wedding and Sahar’s desperation to find a solution.

Throughout the book, there is a sense of longing, of yearning for freedom, for love, for one another.  It is a book filled with choices where nothing is right due to the society around them.  Yet through it all, Sahar shines.  She is a wonderful character who is strong, smart and unstoppable. 

This book depicts in life in Iran but also offers a diverse look at GLBTQ issues in the Middle East.  With a piercingly strong heroine, it is a powerful pick for public library collections.  Appropriate for ages 13-17.

Reviewed from ARC received from Algonquin Young Readers.

Review: The Lord of Opium by Nancy Farmer

| Tasha

lord of opium

The Lord of Opium by Nancy Farmer

Released September 3, 2013.

This is the sequel to the award-winning The House of the Scorpion, which came out in 2004.  Matt, clone of the dead drug lord El Patron, is now master of the Land of Opium, his own country.  All of the problems he saw as he grew up in Opium are still there.  The eejits, people who have been made into zombies by having computer chips placed in their brains, are still required for Opium to thrive.  Making opium and selling it is still the way that everything is funded.  And everyone expects Matt to step quickly into the same brutal ways as El Patron used.  Matt desperately wants to fix everything wrong with Opium, but he comes up against many obstacles.  Matt must quickly learn who to trust in the web of lies that El Patron created. 

I was thrilled to see a new book in this series, but concerned that I would have to re-read the first one because it has been nine years.  Somehow Farmer manages to place you right back into the world without rehashing the first book.  I found myself immediately recalling the first book, probably because of the strength of Farmer’s stories and world building.  It all came rushing back with no problems.  Now that is amazing writing!

Matt is such a complex character, just as he was in the first book.  He is both indebted to Opium and yet despises it.  He loves the land and the place itself but hates the reason it exists too.  He resents the money and wealth that surrounds him yet finds himself unable to not use it.  Matt is trapped in the most complicated of moral and ethical dilemmas and there is no clear way forward at any time.  The result is a novel that is riveting thanks to those deep questions.

The setting of lush Opium is written with care and detail.  Farmer lingers over descriptions of Opium as the last green place on earth and the fact that it is probably the only salvation for the rest of the world.  Her pacing is also nicely handled.  She slows it at times to allow relationships to build but the action keeps the pace fast and the book flies past.

A worthy successor to a great first novel, this book does not suffer from any sophomore slump.  Welcome back to the world of Opium!  Appropriate for ages 14-18.

Reviewed from digital galley received from Edelweiss and Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

Review: Love in the Time of Global Warming by Francesca Lia Block

| Tasha

love in the time of global warming

Love in the Time of Global Warming by Francesca Lia Block

Released August 27, 2013.

Seventeen-year-old Pen has survived the earthquake and tsunami wave in her native Los Angeles, but all of her family and friends have disappeared.  For weeks, Pen stays in her destroyed home, living off of the canned goods that her paranoid father kept in the basement.  But when the group of men come, she flees, aided by one of them and given a van, food, water, a map, and the promise of her family being alive.  Leaving her home, Pen finds only desolation and monsters.  There are giants on the loose, stomping around and leaving piles of gleaming clean human bones behind.  When Pen meets her first giant, she blinds his last good eye and flees.  She lands in a house where everyone is high on lotus juice and meets Hex who encourages her to dally there with him.  But Pen is on a quest to find her family, hoping that they are alive in Las Vegas.  Hex joins her and soon others aid her in her journey that is filled with love, butterflies, and danger.

A retelling of Homer’s Odyssey, Pen is a modern Odysseus on her own journey home.  Block’s writing is amazing.  There are passages that are piercingly true like her description of a mall: “The mall, with its greasy smells and labyrinth of silver escalators leading nowhere, always made me hungry and tired like I needed something I could never have.”  Her phrases sing and move, illuminating the truth beyond our surface world.  Block writes of crushes and lust and love in a way that speaks to what happens in the heart and under the skin, a blistering wonder.

Pen is a curious heroine.  She is a reluctant hero, at first unable to leave her home, then blinding the giant in defense.  The book is about her transformation from normal teen girl to rocking hero willing to put it all on the line for those she loves.  She grows in confidence and skill in natural way.  But much of this book is wonderfully unnatural.  The ties to The Odyssey make for a book that is monstrous as well as beautiful.  It is a tale that is unable to be categorized thanks to its genre-bending mix of dystopian fantasy, myths, and modern reality.

Block has created another amazing read in this book.  Her fans will rejoice at a new book from her, but this is also one that will create new fans.  Appropriate for ages 14-17.

Reviewed from ARC received from Henry Holt and Company at ALA.

Review: 45 Pounds (More or Less) by K. A. Barson

| Tasha

45 pounds

45 Pounds (More or Less) by K. A. Barson

When Ann’s parents divorced and then her parents remarried and started new families, Ann turned to food to soothe herself.  Now she is 16 years old and wears a size 17.  Her mother on the other hand is a perfect size 6.  When they shop together, it is torture for Ann.  Her mother tries to motivate her, but picking out a tiny bikini as motivation is not the right way!  Then Ann is asked to be a maid of honor in her aunt’s wedding and she decides to lose 45 pounds by the wedding in 10 weeks.  Ann starts out by ordering a kit from an infomercial and eating according their diet.  To do that, she has to get a job to pay for the food.  Her summer suddenly becomes about a lot more than watching TV and eating.  Now she is attending dance lessons for the wedding, gets invited to the party of the year, and has a boy flirting with her!  It’s a summer of change, and it’s not all about losing weight.

Thank goodness for the lightness of this title.  This subject can be heavy handed at times, but not here.  Happily, the book deals with weighty topics (pun intended) but manages to remain positive and not didactic at all.  Instead it is a voyage of self-discovery for Ann and the reader.  One notes quickly that she catches the attention of the cute boy before losing lots of weight.  The book does address fad diets and infomercials as well as the way that parental pressure can backfire. 

Yet the book is not all about weight loss.  It also explores divorce and its impact on children, the way siblings can drift away, the loss of friendships, and the way that all of that impacts self esteem.  It is this depth that makes the book so rich.  One understands Ann’s pain and why she was eating to cover it all up.  Beautifully, readers are also shown that thin people may not be quite as comfortable or healthy as they may seem either.

A great pick for teen readers, this book is about being comfortable at any size.  Appropriate for ages 13-16.

Reviewed from copy received from Viking.

Review: Boy Nobody by Allen Zadoff

| Tasha

boy nobody

Boy Nobody by Allen Zadoff

Boy Nobody enters schools, follows his orders, identifies his target, and completes his mission.  He is a soldier, working for The Program.  He is invisible, just another teen, but he is so much more.  His life changed when he was taken into The Program at age 11.  The Program fixed him, turning him into someone who can notice the smallest things, who can kill silently, and who has no emotions.  But when Boy Nobody is asked to do the fastest and most dangerous mission of his life, he discovers that he does have emotions.  And that is perhaps the most dangerous thing of all.

I have deliberately given a vague summary above, since a large part of the pleasure of this read is piecing things together.  Written in the first person, the reader gets to see the world from Boy Nobody’s skewed point of view.  This adds to the immediacy of the read, making it all personal, particularly the violence.  And there is violence, fights and murder, done with a coldness that makes it all the more sinister.  Throughout, you have Boy Nobody’s voice explaining just why it is all alright and how his life works.  Then as he begins to feel again, that voice changes and expands.  It is subtle but also powerful. 

This book is written with pacing in mind, the entire book reading like a movie script that plays before your eyes.  There is no hesitation here, little lengthy prose, just vibrant details that are necessary to hurtle the novel forward.  It makes for a read that is riveting and a joy to read. 

The ideal beach read for teens, this book has a thrilling combination of contract killing, subterfuge, and intelligence.  Appropriate for ages 14-17.

Reviewed from ARC received from Little, Brown.

Review: Starglass by Phoebe North

| Tasha

starglass

Starglass by Phoebe North

Terra lives with her abusive, drunken father aboard the Asherah, a spaceship the size of a city.  Hers is the generation that will finally arrive at their destination planet after traveling for over 500 years in space.  Terra’s mother died of cancer, a disease completely unknown on the ship before her death, leaving Terra with her absent older brother and cruel father.  Terra is now 16 and assigned to a job, botanist, though she had wanted to be an artisan because she loves to draw.  Her father doesn’t approve of her art and Terra does not enjoy her dull work as a botanist.  Soon Terra is being courted by her father’s apprentice and is drawn into a mutinous scheme to change the hierarchy aboard the ship.  Her work as a botanist is also getting more interesting.  What more could a girl want than romance and a good job?  Terra definitely wants more, she wants answers.

Out of a standard spaceship story foundation, North has crafted something very special.  This small city-sized spaceship is filled with secrets, ones that spell freedom but also ones that can kill.  Yet the story is less about the endless travel and the claustrophobia of a closed society and much more about one young woman, her choices and the way in which an individual can impact the community around them.  It is a story of opportunities both good and bad, choices that are impossible to make, and a responsibility beyond oneself. 

North has woven Jewish traditions into the story and carefully changed them as if the passage of time had both torn at them but also strengthened parts of them.  The community on the ship is cohesive but deeply fractured.  It is this society that makes the book very compelling.  It is also Terra herself too, a young woman deeply grieving the loss of her mother and seemingly without any choices in life.  Yet she finds strength to fight back, to choose and to love on her own terms. 

Startling, beautiful and richly written, get this one into the hands of science fiction readers.  Appropriate for ages 15-17.

Reviewed from digital galley received from Edelweiss and Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

Review: Will & Whit by Laura Lee Gulledge

| Tasha

will whit

Will & Whit by Laura Lee Gulledge

The author of Page by Paige returns with another superb graphic novel.  Will has suffered a tragedy and now fear the dark, since she sees the shadows of those she has lost within them.  Her hobby is to create lamps out of found objects, keeping the dark at bay.  Then Hurricane Whitney roars in and takes away the electricity entirely so that Will is left in a complete blackout.  Happily, she is surrounded by great friends who are just as creative as she is.  There is even an arts carnival being created.  Now Will just has to face her fears, in the darkness.

Done in black-and-white, this graphic novel plays nicely with light and dark.  The entire background of the pages change from the bright white to pure black once the power goes out in the story.  Gulledge’s story embraces creativity and also features female characters who are real and honest.  Gulledge also nicely uses metaphor in the story, showing shadows coming towards Will who are human shaped.  As that part of the story is resolved, readers will notice the changes in the shadows around Will, a visual harbinger of real change. 

Get this into the hands of those who enjoyed Page by Paige as well as other teens who are creative and touch romantic.  Appropriate for ages 13-16.

Reviewed from library copy.

Review: The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

| Tasha

5W FINAL COVER.indd

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

The author of the Monstrumologist series returns with this riveting story of alien invasion.  The planet knew that the aliens had arrived, but the silence for days left them feeling hopeful.  Then the 1st wave took away electricity and cars.  The 2nd wave took out the coasts.  The 3rd wave brought the Red Death.  The 4th wave took away trust.  Cassie is one of the survivors of all four waves and just may be the only remaining human on earth.  She has seen her family die, her mother from the Red Death and her father killed right in front of her, but her little brother may still be alive, since he was taken to safety on a school bus.  But Cassie also knows that it is death to trust anyone at all, so she is not sure whether where Sammy was taken is safe or not.  Now she is alone, just her and her M16, trying to reach him.  Then Evan Walker enters her life, saving her from a gunshot wound.  Cassie knows to trust no one.  So how does she deal with a situation where she was to trust to heal and maybe even to save her brother.

This is one incredible novel.  The pacing is what I have to talk about first.  There are moments where I could not turn the pages fast enough, then others where I had to walk away for a bit to deal with the latest heart-shattering reveal.  This book is a dance of hope and terror, trust and knowing better.  Yancey proves quickly that he is not afraid to shock, to kill, to maim.  This book is filled with death, filled with despair, yet it is also about strength, hope and humanity.  Yancey writes this perfectly, keeping readers on a razorblade of tension throughout. 

A large piece of the success of this book are the characters and the book tells their individual stories.  Cassie is one strong heroine, who is willing to go through hell to get her little brother back.  She is not fearless but is always courageous and willing to do what has to be done.  Readers find out before Cassie herself does what happened to her little brother.  This adds to that tension, especially since one doesn’t trust Yancey not to do horrific things even to the littlest of children.  There is Zombie, a boy that Cassie went to school with, who has been trained to be a child soldier since the aliens came.  And finally, there is Evan, the farmboy heartthrob who is dangerous but delicious too.

Expect this to be one of the big books this summer.  It would be a pleasure to booktalk, since the alien invasion in waves basically sells this.  Perhaps most telling of all is that this is now the only way that I see an alien invasion happening.  It is clever, chilling and deadly.  Appropriate for ages 15-17.

Reviewed from copy received from Putnam.

Review: Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg

| Tasha

openly straight

Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg

Rafe is openly gay in his home town of Boulder, Colorado.  OK, he’s beyond out of the closet, he’s the guy that is asked to speak publicly about being gay, his mother is president of the local PFLAG chapter, and he speaks to high schools about tolerance.  So when he heads to a private all-boys school in New England, he decides to no longer be that out about being gay.  He just wants to be normal, be one of the guys, have guy friends and play soccer.  So he goes back into the closet.  He tells himself that it’s not a big deal, since sexuality is just one part of the whole person.  But things get complicated.  First, a boy on campus has a breakdown.  Then he has to start lying to people when they ask about his girlfriend or even when asked directly whether he is straight or gay.  And yeah, there’s this guy he likes, maybe even loves.  This smart, funny novel explores what happens when coming out at home was easy, but coming out a second time is beyond difficult.

Konigsberg writes such a wonderful character in Rafe.  Rafe is fairly confident on several levels but in so many other ways, he’s a complete mess.  I love that he is a boy who spoke out about tolerance, yet seems unable to tolerate the consequences of his being out and proud.  The idea of returning to the closet is one that adds a freshness to this story while the book still deals with all of the stereotypes and negativity that gay teens face.  I also appreciate the frankness with which this book handles gay teen sex, another refreshing aspect of the novel.

Throughout the book, the tension is created through Rafe’s lies and the growing relationship he finds himself in with his best friend.  Throughout one wonders if this is the moment he breaks his silence and frees himself, but Rafe continues to live in the cage he rebuilt for himself.  It’s a book that is funny yes, but equally tragic too. 

Beautifully written with wit and style, this book takes a new look at being gay and out.  Appropriate for ages 16-18.

Reviewed from copy received from Scholastic.