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.

The Name of This Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch+

Maybe Pseudonymous Bosch was just shocked by my age, but it took a long time for me to be trusted by the UK website for The Name of This Book is Secret. I actually sat there and thought of all the reasons I might not be trusted as the little, blue, pulsating oblong at the bottom of the screen inched toward completion. I mean, I can be trusted, right? I didn't lie about my age. Has modern technology come so far that it can tell just by the way I type that I am actually totally useless at keeping a secret?

So it seems is the narrator of The Name of This Book is Secret. At first I thought it was all a bit gimmicky. The first chapter is Xed out completely and then you get a pep talk on how dangerous the book is and do you really want to venture forth blah, blah, blah. However, once there was actual plot, I was hooked. This reads a little like a Lemony Snicket book. Personally I find Snicket annoying, interrupting too much and trying overly hard to be clever. Bosch is less intrusive.
The plot is fast moving and not all that predictable. Cassandra, a survivalist and doomsayer (thus the name), often hangs out with her adopted (gay?) grandfathers in their antique shop. A real estate agent who specializes in clearing out and selling the houses of the recently deceased brings in a pile of junk from a magician's house. Needless to say the magician died in mysterious circumstances, and Cassandra soon finds herself mixed up in a dastardly plot to uncover a terrible secret that will, should Pseudonymous Bosh not be pulling our legs, change the reader's life forever.

I could relate to Cass. Her favorite weather condition is wind on a sunny day, as is mine. She is growing up without her father, who was struck by lightning. Mine wasn't struck by anything but probably could have benefited from an electrical charge or two. Max Ernst's (Cass' diminutive and verbose sidekick) parents are so divided that their house is split in two, with Max's bedroom straddling both sides. I found this a rather apt image for the way that many divorced parents insist on dividing their child equally between them, thereby making their child in need of therapy for most of their adult life. Bosch does a nice job of fleshing out his characters with these details and saves his book and its heroes from becoming Snicketesque.

Other reviews of The Name of this Book is Secret: Book Kid Reviews, Kidsread.com, Seeing Indigo

The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean

Geraldine McCaughrean has won just about every award for children's books there is except the Newbery. She was also given the honor of being selected to write the official sequel to Peter Pan, Peter Pan in Scarlet. This year she was awarded the Printz for The White Darkness, a book I almost gave up on after four chapters. I am so glad I didn't. In fact, after chapter five, the book never left my hands. I finished it in one sitting (it helped to be bed ridden with a cold at the time).
This is the story of an extremely plucky fourteen year old girl, Sym. She has an obsession with Antartica encouraged by her "uncle" Victor, who has plied her with books and documentaries on the "The Ice" since she was a child. Sym is particularly mesmerized by the story of the doomed 1910 British expedition of Captain Scott. This is not necessarily so outlandish. It is a well known story to British school children. Personally, while feeling sorry for the men who all perished in the attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole, I have little admiration for their sacrifice. What was supposed to be first and foremost a scientific expedition became a pride-fueled race to plant a British flag on the frozen wastes before a rival Norwegian could claim the honor. Scott was accompanied by a man named Captain Laurence "Titus" Oates, who is attributed with the famous line, "I'm going just going outside and may be sometime," as he exited to his death. Oates was heralded as a hero; he was very ill and was slowing down the party, so he committed suicide in order that his teammates could go on without him.
Sym has taken the heroic figure of Oates and combined him with the handsome figure of the actor who portrayed him to create an imaginary friend who fills the emptiness in her heart left by her father's messy death and her own social awkwardness. Oates fills the pages of McCaughrean's book, too and it is a tribute to her skill as a writer that he is as real to us as he is to Sym. In fact, he and Sym end up being the only real characters in a novel full of people who are not who they say.
Uncle Victor, for me, was a phony the minute he stepped in to the story and the clumsy bait and switch of the first two chapters was what nearly had me giving up. Victor gives an innocent enough invitation to a free weekend in Paris to Sym and her mother, but mother discovers her passport is missing just as the train doors close, and Victor and Sym leave without her. In Paris, however, Victor is not interested in any of the usual sights and suggests they travel on, "I thought somewhere a bit farther afield. A jaunt. Now that we're here. What say?" His jaunt turns out to be a trip to Antartica on a package tour for the thrill-seeking rich--only Victor is seeking something more than a thrill and Sym is part of his delusional and dangerous plan. After Victor drugs the entire tour group, blows up an aeroplane, and steals an all-terrain vehicle, Sym finds herself heading on to the Ross Ice Shelf, "Did you know: Some of the ice is half a mile thick? Except where it isn't". In the vehicle with them is a Norweigen filmmaker and his son. Except that they aren't.
What follows is a series of life-threatening and breathtaking adventures. Once Victor starts the engine and heads out in to the unknown, there is no way you can put this book down until the ride is over two hundred and twenty pages later. McCaughrean leads us in to the cold, blinding beauty of Antartica and we experience through Sym's mesmerized gaze, "the immensity of wrinkled whiteness stretching east to the edge of forever".
Just FYI: There are a couple of veiled references to sex in the book. Sym wonders what it would have been like to make love to Oates and Sym is worried about one of her friends who claims to have met a thirty-year old man on the internet.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan

I should have brushed up on my Greek mythology before plunging in to this, but even with a vague memory of my reading of The Greek Myths by Robert Graves, I thoroughly enjoyed the first book in the trilogy, The Lightning Thief. A sixth grade student introduced me to these mythical adventures, and now they’ve gone the rounds of all the discerning fantasy fans in the class. My third grade daughter hasn’t put it down since she picked it up.
Percy Jackson is a sixth grade student who has moved from to school to school. A victim of Attention Deficit Disorder and dyslexia, trouble seems to follow him wherever he goes. He’s trying hard to make it work at his latest school when his math teacher turns in to a shriveled hag with claws and yellow fangs and tries to kill him. Now, there are probably a few of my students who would like to claim the same has happened to them-but that’s another story. Percy must go on his own odyssey in order to find out who he is and why half the monsters of Ancient Greece are trying to kill him. Percy is a likeable character, and I appreciate the message that Percy’s problems at school are the result of his demi-divinity. Wouldn’t it be great if that were true ! There is a strong female heroine in the story too, Annabeth, daughter of Athena and a good person to have on your side on a trip to the Underworld.
You learn a lot about Greek mythology when you read this. However, I would recommend keeping some kind of reference book handy (or this great website The Theoi Project) as Riordan seasons the story with more gods and monsters than my mother-in-law puts salt on her cereal, and trust me, she uses a lot of salt.
Other titles in the trilogy : Sea of Monsters, The Titan’s Curse, The Battle of the Labyrinth (5/08)
Interesting aside : Riordan has been hired to develop a new series by Scholastic that will be they hope will be the successor to Harry Potter.
Click here to go to Riordan's blog.

Beowulf adapted and illustrated by Gareth Hinds

There’s a Beowulf frenzy going on right now. I blame Angelina Jolie. My local children’s bookstore, the Red Balloon, has part of a shelf devoted to it. Apparently, anything with five or more books constitutes a “section”. I rummaged through the various versions, including the one with a big shiny sticker proclaiming, “Now a major motion picture!”, and settled on Gareth Hinds’ beautifully illustrated and satisfyingly gory graphic novel (the ladies at the Red Balloon still say comic). Text is kept at a minimum and is based on the 1909 translation by A.J. Church. This is irrelevant to me as this is my first Beowulf, but it may matter to someone out there in the ether. Although scarce, the words have not been emasculated. Kids are still going to have to grapple with sentences like, “Of savage and merciless temper was she, and now she was wrought to fury by the woe of her son”. I’d be more motivated to tackle words like “liegeman” and “burnish” on a page full of beheaded soldiers and torn limbs, wouldn’t you? This thousand-year-old narrative is expertly told in both pictures and words,
“There the tide washes in and sprays the forests with its brine. Clouds shroud the waters and wet winds wail through the trees.”
Any male middle grader hoping for a glimpse of an Angelinaesque beauty in tight fitting robes is going to be sorely disappointed. For the ladies, however, you see a lot of Beowulf. Not all. But nearly. On a more serious note, there is an image of pre 9/11 New York that suddenly appears when King Hrothgar is lecturing Beowulf on the danger of too much pride and power after Beowulf has successfully slain Grendel and his monstrous mother. “Come in what shape it may, death will subdue even thee, thou hero of war.” Which, of course, it does.

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.

The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness by Michelle Paver

What impresses me most about Michelle Paver is how she manages to mix ancient mysticism with fast-paced adventure and deliver a fascinating history lesson at the same time. Set 6,000 years ago, The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness follow Torak, a young spirit walker, his faithful companion Wolf, and Renn, an accomplished huntress. Torak, who can talk to wolves, is an orphan of the Wolf Clan and Renn, a girl with the powers of a mage, a daughter of the Raven Clan . Together they escape danger and death in the form of hungry ice bears, enraged wild boars, menacing social outcasts and their own inexperience. Grudgingly they come to accept their destiny - to defeat the evil Soul Eaters who plot to unleash demons on the many clans in order to rule them all.
The growing bond between Renn, Torak and Wolf lends these breathtaking adventures a human quality that transcends millenia. In many ways we children of the 21st Century are almost unrecognizable as the descendents of our ancestors who lived in awe of nature and survived by taking only what they needed. Of course, this doesn't mean that I want to start rubbing seal blubber on my face and swallowing still-warm guillemot livers. However, there is a tiny part of Renn and Torak in me tucked deep, deep down which makes me look at my processed meat in its cling-film wrapping and wonder.

Books in this series: Wolf Brother, Spirit Walker, Soul Eater, and Outcast (May 20, 2008)
Fans of the series have their own website The Clan.