Benjamin Dove by Fridrik Erlings

Benjamin Dove is described as a "canonical treasure" in the author's native Iceland. It won the International Board on Books for Young People Award and has been made in to a feature length film available in the UK. It doesn't seem to have made much of a stir since its journey over the Atlantic last year.

It's an old fashioned story of friendship, jealousy, bullying and betrayal. There is pointless violence and ultimately a tragedy, but the story is human and so there is also forgiveness, understanding, and redemption. Benjamin, Jeff and Manny are three friends who play together on "the Ground", a sacred space protected from the town bullies by its unofficial yet unopposed guard Grandma Dell. Jeff is the kind of boy who sees everything as a competition and a chance to prove himself the fastest, strongest, or most skillful of the three. His inability to accept defeat often leads to violent outbursts that begin to wear on his two friends, particularly Manny, who is the youngest, and often bears the brunt of Jeff's frustration.
Enter Roland, a new boy in the neighborhood whose bedroom resembles a scene out of King Arthur's legend. Roland believes he is descended from Scottish kings and stands up to the two town bullies, putting himself in physical danger. However, it is Grandma Dell, not Roland's new friends, who comes to his rescue and she ends up paying a terrible price for her intervention.
The boys, led by Roland, create knightly personas for themselves and vow to avenge the wrong done to Grandma Dell. With the creation of The Order of the Red Dragon the stage is set for a battle of good against evil. Unfortunately, as in real life, the line between the two is not always easily discernible and seemingly righteous decisions or careless choices can have unexpected consequences.

Falling from Grace by Gail Godwin

I got in to the bath with this book and emerged one and a half hours later wrinkled and cold. So, definitely a page turner. Two sisters, Annie and Grace, are spending the winter at the beach and their favorite game is a more complex version of hide and seek called tracking. The sisters get separated from their father and the weather and the tide turns on them. Annie makes it up the cliff to safety but Grace slips and disappears. Meanwhile, fourteen-year-old Kip gets caught in the storm too and finds the girls' backpack floating in the bay. He answers the girls' cell phone and becomes caught up in the frantic search, becoming a suspect himself as the days go by and no body is found. The same night a young boy disappears in to the churning seas and a drunk has-been rock star haunts the beach. Godwin spins a suspenseful tale that asks questions about what kind of people we trust. Godwin hails from Australia and is an editor of children's books. This is her first teen novel.

Living Life on the Edge (of my sofa)

I have been living dangerously this past week and experiencing some events I hope never happen. I know its so cliche, but I am once again reminded of why we read. Jane Yolen and Bruce Coville took me up a mountainside with a millennialist sect, hoping to be saved by God from the fire that would end the Earth. Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life as We Knew It raced me around a supermarket frantic and scared as the moon, knocked out of orbit, unleashed tsunamis and played havoc with power supplies. All that and conferences, too!

Armageddon Summer is supposed to be a love story among other things. Two teenagers, Marina and Jed, come together as they watch the world around them fall apart but not because of God's wrath. Rather, it is human nature - fear, doubt, selfishness, and self-righteousness- that sparks the tragedy on the mountainside and leaves twenty dead. For me, the romance seemed superfluous to what was really a fascinating journey in to the hearts and minds of a group of people desperate to believe in something that would wipe away the mess of their worldly existence so far. Marina's mother's marriage is falling apart and Jed's mother recently walked out on both him and his father. These disillusioned adults find something to trust and believe in in the form of Reverend Beeson and his Believers. "I stood by you all these years and believe me it hasn't been easy," Marina's mother writes to her husband. "But there's a hole inside me. I want to believe in something. Something bigger than me. Once it was you I believed in. That's a long time gone." Ironically, by giving themselves up to Beeson's Flock they abandon the people who need them and believe in them the most - their children. The end of the novel was quite a shock for me. The believers barricade themselves in to their mountain retreat using electric fences and guards with guns. As the appointed day approaches, panic stricken "outsiders" demand to enter the compound and the day of judgement ends with death and disillusionment for the Believers. I would have liked to see where the authors would have taken the story if simply nothing had happened on that day. No fire and brimstone; no saving or cleansing. What then?

Life as we Knew It is a slow burn. It begins with the catastrophic alteration of the moon's orbit and life never gets back to normal. Miranda and her family are spared the tsunamis of the coastal states and the earthquakes of the mid west, but they must struggle daily to survive as food, gas, oil, and water become increasingly sparse. Family and its survival become the number one priority. This is not a story of a community coming together in times of crisis. It is Darwin's theory of survival made real. Would this be the reality? I didn't love this book but I appreciated its honesty and simplicity.

If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period by Gennifer Choldenko

This is the new one from the acclaimed author of Al Capone does my Shirts (which I haven't read). I wasn't "felled" (sorry) by it, but I read it in one sitting. It's the story of a couple of misfits, Kirtsen and Walk, at an expensive white private high school in San Fransisco. Kirsten is white and rich but overweight and therefore not a member of the "in" crowd. Walk is Black and attending the school on a scholarship.

A couple of things brought this up short for me. First, I have a problem with the femme fatale of the book who seems too cliche for me. This is Brianna, the rich, beautiful, blonde and popular clique leader. Her mother is big on the PTO and at one point cancels the school's talent show because her daughter cannot take part. During lunch, Brianna askes Kirsten, who she knows to have an eating disorder, to lift up her shirt so they can compare stomachs. When she leaves, she pushes her half finished pizza toward Kirsten, "I think Kirsten is too thin...So here...Fatten up" (90). Maybe it has been too long since high school for me but, really, that mean? Brianna actually goes out of her way to torture Matteo, whose mother cleans house for Brianna's family, because she knows she "owns" him.

My other issue is that there are too many messages in this book: eating disorders, divorce, infidelity, honesty, and more. At times, I didn't know which message to focus on.

However, these can be overlooked because the novel does one thing well - race. This novel asks a lot of questions of young readers. What does it mean to be a low income or even middle income kid at a school swamped in over-privaleged white kids? How do you create authentic friendships with these students when your mother tells you, "Race doesn't matter...except for every hour of every day" (37). It also asks the reader to question stereotypes, even ones people have about members of their own race. Walk has a cousin, Jamal, who seems to be going down the wrong path. Jamal arrives at Walk's apartment in a black SUV, pulling a suitcase, "Got some product to show you," Jamal tells Walk. "Really fine stuff." Walk assumes the worst and replies, "I don't do this stuff, Jamal" (60). It turns out he is selling laundry detergent to make enough money to attend the same school as Walk. "Isn't anybody doesn't need soap. It's the American dream, man, right here. I've been to a weekend. They told me all about it" (61). The heartbreaking thing - and I admire Choldenko for not making everything work out OK in the end - is that Jamal gets in to the school but cannot make enough money to supplement his scholarship. The only students of color at the school have either a full scholarship or are being subsidized by a white person. Will kids be savvy enough to see that the American dream doesn't work for everyone, especially those who most need it to be true? I wish Choldenko had made this the central message instead of making it difficult to find among all the others.

the mysterious edge of the heroic world by e.l. konigsburg

Before I begin, I must allow myself a short rant about book titles devoid of capitalisation. It makes the already hard job of teaching 9-11 year olds "the rules". You can hear the satifaction in their voice as they wave their little hands at you and proclaim, "But it's not capitalised on the cover."

Anyway, back to the book. I went through this novel like a hot knife through butter, but I'm having a hard time putting my finger on what exactly I found so compelling. The story follows young Amedeo as he helps clean out and catalogue the eclectic contents of his elderly neighbor's mansion. While doing so, he finds an original drawing by Modigliani given to Mrs Zender by her husband as a wedding present. The drawing, in an all too convenient twist of fate, turns out to have a fascinating and tragic history connected to Nazi Germany and Amedeo's godfather. We learn that Modigliani, as part of the Modern art world, was labled as a Degenerate artist by the Nazis and his work was outlawed. Many Degenerate pieces were confiscated and found their way in to underground collections. The piece that Amedeo finds was used for both good and evil. For me, however, the true source of fascination in the novel is Mrs Zender herself. I adored her and despised her at the same time. A one time very minor European opera star, she now floats around her treasure stuffed mansion drinking chilled champagne, dropping the names of famous artists and writers-friends whose work she neither read nor admired, "I haven't read a book in years . Every now and then I read a review in a magazine at the beauty parlor, and sometimes I think I would enjoy reading and entire book, but I allow the thought to pass."(149) Her connection to the Modigliani is a somewhat sordid tale. Konigsburg has created one of the most intruiging characters I've encountered in young adult literature lately. Mrs Zender is a bully, a diva, and a lonely soul all at the same time. Tennessee Williams could have created her.

Night of the Howling Dogs by Graham Salisbury

With my usual lack of attention to detail, it wasn't until I finished reading this compelling tale of survival that I realised it was a true story. Salisbury's cousin was a member of a scout troop that found itself engulfed by a Tsunami while they camped on a deserted beach on the Big Island of Hawaii. In real life, not everyone made it back from the camping trip. You'll have to read it yourself to find out if the same is true in the novel.

Salisbury foreshadows this catastrophic event with the tension that exists between the narrator Dylan, a white middle-class boy, and older Louie, part Hawaiin whose parents have almost forgotten he exists. Dylan had witnessed Louie being beaten up and in his humiliation, Louie turned on Dylan. Louie keeps Dylan nervous with his menacing looks and constant teasing but their mutual dislike becomes irrelevant in the events that follow.