How I Live Now (Book Awards II Challenge #7 of 10)

When Corinne saw this in my car on my way to the gym she said, "You'll read that in one day." She was right. Meg Rosoff's Printz Award winning novel was completely engaging. Daisy, a fifteen year old from New York, moves to England to live with her Aunt and cousins. They live on a farm in the country and things seem to be pretty idealic...but then a war begins. England is invaded by "The Enemy." There are no telling details about this particular enemy just that it has taken over. This is when things get scary for Daisy and her cousins. Daisy and her younger cousin Piper end up being sent away, seperated from Edmund (her cousin who oddly enough she has fallen in love with who she is having a serious relationship) and her other male cousins. As the war progresses, Daisy ends up having to do things she never thought she would have to do. I won't go into too many specifics but How I Live Now is a survival story and Daisy is absolutely determined to survive.

Monster (Book Awards Challenge #3 of 10)

Steve Harmon is on trial for murder. In this first person narrative by Walter Dean Myers, Steve describes his stint in prison and also his trial. His prison time in described diary style and his trial is written as a screenplay, written by Steve. It is how he is able to detatch himself enough from the trial to stay sane...he is terrified and only 16 years old. Steve's story is an alarming and heartbreaking look into inner city life - gangs, drugs, violence, crime. It provides a human face for circumstances that many people see only in an abstract way. It is not really a commentary on the criminal justice system although it certainly plays a factor and provides insight into prejudices that are inherant in the system. Steve must wait to see if the jury of his peers will determine he is innocent - the way he sees himself, or if they believe the state prosecutor an decide that he is, in fact, a monster.

Looking for Alaska

Miles can't stand life in Florida. While not having any friends may have influenced his decision to attend Cluver Creek Boarding School in Alabama, what Miles truly wants is to seek "a Great Perhaps." What he finds is Alaska, a crazy, funny, moody, beautiful girl who throws him completely for a loop. Caught in the middle of rivalries, classes, and rules, Miles tries to find his place at Culver Creek and with his roommate the Colonel, his friend Takumi, and Alaska he thinks he has. But Alaska may be more than Miles bargained for.

John Green gives his main characters funny quirks - Miles' is the ability to recall people's last words. It's not Miles only quirk but it's a good one. Another quirk is the division of the book - there are no chapters. The book begins "one hundred thirty-six days before" and ends with "one hundred thirty-six days after." What Miles hears at day 0 he will never forget.

An Abundance of Katherines

John Green's Printz Honor book An Abundance of Katherines is the story of Colin who has been dumped by girls named Katherine nineteen times. After Katherine number 19 dumped him, Colin and his best friend Hassan take a road trip and end up in Gunshot, Tennessee where Colin meets Lindsey and while trying to sort out his feelings for the various Katherines in his life figures out the Underlying Theory of Katherine Predictability - an equation which will determine how long any relationship will last based on the relative dumper/dumpee status of the couple. He also figures out if he can ever love a girl that isn't named Katherine.

Below is the Peck Essay that I wrote about this book.

How is the main character different from you?

Colin is a dumpee. He has been dumped nineteen times by girls named Katherine. Except for the fact that Colin is male and I am not, he and I are very much alike. I too was a dumpee in my teen and college years. Not nineteen times and the guys had different names but out of the maybe ten or twelve boyfriends I had between the ages of twelve and twenty two, I was the dumper only twice. But status as a dumpee is not the only thing that Colin and I have in common. It’s not just that he is a dumpee, he tends to wallows in his misery about it. He sees his life as a series of relationships that ended badly even though he has some great accomplishments and qualities. That is how I measured myself during my teen years, by who cared about me and when and also when he stopped caring.

Colin is also mathematically minded as am I. He refers to himself as a prodigy, which I did/do not, but math is something that comes naturally to him and he uses it to help make sense out of things. He actually uses math to create the “Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability” to try to figure out why he continues to get dumped and also how he can predict how his next relationship will go. I never came up with something quite that amazing but I remember making charts and writing down ideas as to why my life was going the way it was. It also caused me to continue thinking about all the bad break-ups I had and Colin does a lot of re-living breakups during the story.

Colin and I share an unfortunate tendency to be awkward in social situations. He thinks a lot about what he does and says and wonders how others view him. We both are easily embarrassed and dwell on past mistakes.

Another interesting commonality is what Colin calls myopia. This is in reference to two things. First, Colin has bad vision (he is nearsighted like I am) and Colin also tends to get blindsided by events, he is unable to see what is coming in his near future even if the signs may be there. He really wants to hope and believe that things will work out well this next time if he just gives it a chance but he continues to get let down. Happily, he is also blindsided by a healthy relationship with a non-Katherine named Lindsey as I was blindsided by a relationship with the man who would eventually become my husband. We both got a bit of a happy ending.

American Born Chinese (Graphic Novel Challenge #3)

This graphic novel written by Gene Luen Yang begins with a tale about a money king who wanted to be a god but because of his monkey-ness he was cast out of heaven and was none too pleased about it.

Then the novel shifts to tell the story of Jin Wang. Jin Wang was born to parents who met eachother after moving from China to America. When he was nine years old, Jin's parents moved from Chinatown to an overwhelmingly white suburb. He encounters the offhanded cruelty of his classmates but becomes fast friends with a new boy from Taiwan named Wei-Chen.

A third storyline begins with a boy named Danny who's unbelievably stereotyped Chinese cousin Chin-Kee (complete with buck teeth, yellow skin, eyes permanently squinted shut, and botched English) comes around as he has once a year and proceeds to mess up Danny's life.

For the rest of the book, the novel switches between the Monkey King's story, Jin Wang's story, and Danny's story. It explores identity and acceptance and the innate desire of wanting to fit in.

Postcards from No Man's Land (H.C.A. #6)

Jacob is seventeen and having typical nineteen year old issues. He feels awkward, worries about what he says and does...basically an insecure boy who is visiting Amsterdam at the request of his grandmother (who is English) so he can visit Geertrui, his grandmother's old friend. The story alternates between Jacob and and a nineteen year old Geertrui in Holland as the Allies are trying to liberate the country from the Germans.

As jacob tries to figure out why exactly he has been asked to visit Geertrui, he tours Amsterdam with Geertrui's son and does some exploring with his sexuality...nothing graphic, mostly thoughts and jumbled feelings.

Family, truthfulness, love, euthenasia, are only a few of the things Jacob must navigate through as he learns about his past and why it is he who must learn geertrui's story. Aiden Chambers won the Hans Christian Andersen award in 2002 and won the Printz Award and the British Carnegie Medal for this book in 2003. I have to admit this one kind of sucked me in...Jacob's insecurity and self-depreciation at times were tedious but I loved Geertrui's character. Though the book kept switching between the 90's and the 40's, the book really flowed well and the pieces came together just fine at the end.