Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John

"Could it be that after eighteen years Dad saw me that way--a poor girl struggling to be understood, who achieved self-sufficiency only by virtue of others' help?"

See, the title is kind of a joke. Dumb is the name of a hard-rock band in Anthony John's debut novel, and here the "dumb" refers to the IQ type of dumb, not the silent, uncommunicative type of dumb.  (The "five flavors" refers to the bands five members.) However,  Piper, the protagonist and narrator of Five Flavors, is deaf.  Since her deafness developed at age 6, she can speak and lip-read, which allows her to function in the hearing world to a certain extent--she attends her neighbourhood high school, where she gets good grades and  kicks the pants off the other chess club members without particularly trying.  But although Piper is neither type of dumb, she is struggling with uncertainty about her future.  For years her dream has been to attend  Gallaudet University, a liberal-arts college for deaf students, "a place where I'd automatically fit in, instead of standing out in all the wrong ways."   When her parents spend the college fund her grandparents left to her on a cochlear implant for her deaf baby sister Grace without even telling her, Piper is left with complicated feelings of frustration and powerlessness.

Wanting to stretch herself in new directions, Piper signs on as Dumb's manager, even though she can't hear a note they play.  And this, for me, was when the book really came alive.  Piper develops a lot of inner power on the road to shaping Dumb into a decent band--some of her challenges include the fact that the band can't play in synch, is the only hard rock band in the world with no drummer,  and has no original songs.  One of the guitarists is still learning to play guitar?  The band spends  more time arguing than practicing?  The talk show host who has booked Dumb on her show is expecting an easy listening number?   Piper takes it all on, and more, on the road to finding Dumb a place in garage-band rock history.

I'm sure there will be an audience for Dumb because of the deaf-heroine angle or the rock music angle, but I actually appreciated Piper's ferocious business smarts the most.  John presents us with a heroine who is decisive, thinks strategically, and makes herself heard.   I liked Piper a lot, and would recommend Five Flavors of Dumb  to any girl thinking of engaging with the business world--it's never too soon to find yourself some inspiration!

Five Flavors of Dumb doesn't seem to have an official trailer, but I like this unofficial one, put together by the Arlington Public Library teen librarians:

Bink and Gollie by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee

Now, who could resist a cover like that?  So fun.  And fun is what this story's all about--Bink and Gollie, best buddies and partners in adventure and roller-skating.

Bink and Gollie has the look of an easy reader, with short chapters, lots of white space and illustrations on every page, but it's actually quite a vocabulary-stretcher, so in my household it worked best as a read-aloud.  Kate DiCamillo is such an elegant writer, and her words just roll off the tongue.  As evidenced by the cover portraits, Bink is kinda informal and very bouncy, while Gollie is considerably more calm and sophisticated, and their language certainly reflects that.  Take this little exchange between the two, which takes place in a store selling  multihued socks:

' "It's a sock bonanza!"  said Bink.
"Indeed it is," said Gollie.  "An extremely bright sock bonanza."
"I'll take this pair,"  said Bink.
"Bink," said Gollie, "the brightness of those socks pains me.  I beg you not to purchase them."
"I can't wait to put them on," said Bink.' 

Ewan and I had some hilarity with the lines:
'"Bink, I implore you, do not knock."
"What does implore mean?"  asked Bink.'

(This is funniest if you give a lot of dramatic emphasis to the word "implore'.) 

As usual with Candlewick, the book itself is beautifully put together, with thick glossy pages and bright expressive illustration, courtesy of Tony Fucile. Candlewick has even given it its own web site and book trailer!  Bink and Gollie is the winner of the ALA's 2011 Theodore Seuss Geisel Award for most distinguished beginning reader book.  Well deserved, I think.   

Guyku: A Year of Haiku for Boys by Bob Raczka, Illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds

"If this puddle could
talk, I think it would tell me
to splash my sister."

The haiku is one of my favourite forms of poetry--I like how it captures and illuminates small moments.  And Peter H. Reynolds is one of my favourite picture book creators--he hooked me with The Dot and I've loved him ever since.  So you can imagine how quickly I grabbed Guyku off the new book shelf.  I was not disappointed. 

In his afterword, poet Bob Raczka explains why he thinks haiku is a great choice for budding young guy poets.  Firstly, "a haiku is an observation of nature, and nature is a place where guys love to be."   And secondly, haiku is always in the present tense, so "whatever happens in a haiku, it's happening right now.  From my experience, guys are always interested in what's happening right now."   I think Raczka has hit the mark with these lively and funny poems.

The Guyku website is also well worth a visit, and Raczka and Reynolds assure us that a Galku (or maybe Herku?) book will be along shortly.  Can't wait!

                                

A Few Chicklit Treats: Mostly Good Girls and Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters

                                       
My two favourite girl books this month have a lot in common.  They're both smart, fun, and captivating.  They feature girls born to wealth and privilege, girls who are savvy, well-educated and have high aspirations.  But just because they're well-dressed and ace their SATs doesn't mean we're not rooting for them--they're all strong, involving protagonists.  There isn't a whiff of the typical rich girl/mean girl caricature lots of teen chick-lit indulges in here. If you're in the mood to read about girls who like and support each other despite their growing pains, you're in the right place.  

Mostly Good Girls is narrated by Violet Tunis, a junior at Westfield School (an exclusive, private girl's academy) and longtime best friends with Katie Cabot. Violet is very goal-oriented and works hard to maintain her never- -quite-perfect grades.  She edits the school literary magazine to boost her chances of getting into a good university.  She's a straight-and-narrow kind of girl, and one of the things that draws her to Katie is Katie's slightly wild streak--Katie's into doing "projects" that seem like a good idea at the time, but end up getting them into hot water (like her plan for Violet and Katie to get rich by becoming pool sharks rather than babysitting, or her plan to offer new students a spooked-out "Harry Potter Tour" of their uptight private school).  Over the course of the book, Katie starts to rebel against her over-privileged life, and Violet becomes more and more bewildered as her best friend starts to seem like a stranger.

Although the theme isn't particularly uproarious, what I found made Mostly Good Girls stand out for me was the humour. Sales fashions her book out of  short, anecdotal chapters and gives Violet a wry, funny voice that kept me turning pages ("Awesome speeches, guys," I said in my last official lie as editor in chief.").    One of my favourite chapters takes place at an editorial meeting for The Wisdom, the school literary magazine, where a truly awful poem about anorexia is being considered for publication.  (I want to be thin/Because that means I win/...Hunger is a sin/As bad for you as a shark's fin/I would laugh and grin/If only I were thin") Violet attempts to hint that the poem, let's be honest, *totally sucks* while trying to maintain an air of impartiality.  Meanwhile her staff offer kindly but obtuse critiques such as "I like the way she rhymed every line."  Sales had me snorting with laughter as Violet becomes increasingly pointed about the obvious badness of the poem, which of course ends up being unanimously selected for publication.  The whole scene is wickedly, deliciously funny. Mostly Good Girls is full of little scenes like this which add so much richness and personality to this story of a struggling but ultimately strong friendship. 

Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters I liked for so many reasons.  The plot is intricate and ingenious, and involves the matriarch of the Sullivan family (known as Almighty to her children and grandchildren) announcing that she will cut the family out of her will unless the family member who has mysteriously displeased her delivers a confession and apology in writing by New Year's Day.  Norrie, Jane and Sassy each suspect that they may have aroused Almighty's displeasure (Norrie by standing up the handsome date Almighty has selected for her Cotillion and running off for a rebellious  weekend in New York with her true love instead,  Jane by publishing a tell-all blog called myevilfamily.com,  and Sassy by killing Almighty's husband).  Each writes a detailed confession in which it becomes clear that  their sins are as complex as they are themselves.  I'd love to have any one of these sisters as my real-life friends, which is, I think, a sign of a successful chick-lit story.

Here's a fun trailer for Mostly Good Girls:

Buddha Boy by Kathe Koja

"Do you know the concept of karma?  It's kind of like a circle, or cause-and-effect, like a slow-tolling bell you rang maybe a year ago, five years ago, maybe in another lifetime if you in believe that.  Karma means that what you do today, and why you do it, makes you who you are forever:  as if you were clay, and every thought and action left a mark in that clay, bent it, shaped it, even ruined it...but with karma there are no excuses, no explanations, no I-didn't-really-mean-it-so-can-I-have-some-more-clay. Karma takes everything you do very, very seriously."

Buddha Boy reminds me so much of Jerry Spinelli's YA classic Stargirl.   It has a similar type of narrator, a regular kid who is drawn to an eccentric new student that none of his fellow students really understand.  The narrator faces the same problem, whether to follow his heart and stand up for the friendship or follow the mean-spirited crowd.  In both cases the title characters stand out due to their unusual creativity and willingness to act out non-mainstream ideas.  Neither book ends exactly the way we want it to, and the maturation the narrators experience is the kind that comes from loss.  

"So explain this, now:  You wish, want, work for one thing, but instead something else happens, the thing you most dreaded, the thing you tried your best to stop.  And then it turns out that what you wanted, all you wanted and more, stood hidden behind exactly what you didn't, and to get to one you had to take the other first. 

Is that how life goes?  Is that how life is supposed to go--like walking blindfolded and backwards to get to where you need to be?  Or is it just karma, gods and lions and hungry ghosts, doing what it has to do?"

Buddha Boy is a short, thoughtful story about friendship and seeing under the surface of people.  Justin is a kid who is content to be ordinary, in the middle, where "it's comfortable, it's easy, and it's safe".  Buddha Boy, or Jinsen (his spiritual name, given to him by a Buddhist teacher, meaning "the fountain of God, the place where God springs up in the world")  arrives in Justin's high school with his head shaved bald and a begging bowl instead of a lunch bag.  Emulating a Buddhist monk, he baffles the student body and enrages the hotshot "kings of the school" with his odd appearance and pacifistic mindset.  Justin and Jinsen are partnered for a class project, and Justin soon finds himself fascinated by Jinsen, his artistry and his zen view of life.  The two boys form a bond which is tested as the school bullies home in on Jinsen with ever-increasing ferocity.  

What I liked most about Buddha Boy, aside from the gorgeous, layered writing, was the complexity and fullness of characterization that Koja achieved while keeping her story simple. The reflective, ever-so-slightly poignant tone does nothing to diminish what Justin in the end takes from his friendship with Jinsen; the insight that inside, we're all gods, even those of us who are unaware. 

My Swordhand is Singing by Marcus Sedgwick

 

I love the title of this book--it resonates, I think, with those ancient epic poems about heroes and battles, victory and defeat, which so many cultures seem to have developed.  It's a good choice for this story.  Sedgwick is a strong and elegant writer who excels at transporting his readers to the past and steeping them in generous amounts of action and chilly atmosphere.

My Swordhand Is Singing is a vampire tale.  It's not written in the current romantic "Bella and Edward" vein;  rather, it is rooted in old Eastern European folklore in which vampires were terrifying, deeply evil, and often quite disgusting to look at.   The folkloric motifs in this story are many--woodcutters, small villages surrounded by the dense wintry gloom of "Mother Forest", gypsies, magical songs and unearthly, unseen characters known as the Shadow Queen and the Winter King.  The charms and defenses against vampires that feature here are equally folkloric--garlic, millet, hawthorne, nets flung into graves.  An archaic ritual, the Wedding of the Dead, plays a pivotal role in the plot.  Sedgwick uses these old beliefs and traditions to create a feeling of historic authenticity, albeit one where the supernatural is dark and dreadful and thrives in the shadows of the natural world. 

Sedgwick's  story concerns the lives of the woodcutter Tomas  and his son Peter, nomads who have recently moved to a hut outside the village of Chust, where villagers view them with xenophobic suspicion.  Tomas is a troubled, violent man who drinks more than he works, and who has been keeping many secrets from his son.  I won't reveal exactly what they are, but they relate to his warrior past.  When a plague of vampires sweeps the village and both his father and the village elders are in denial,  Peter responds to try and protect his sweetheart, drawing his father into danger as well. 

Sedgwick creates some striking images, such as the vampire whose tongue slices through his victim's neck, or the grave with the hole just big enough for Peter to glimpse the corpse's eye, which suddenly opens. However, the chills are nicely balanced by the wholesomeness of Peter's character, which is always humble but grows in courage, determination and maturity.   This is a startling and satisfying book, an exciting story memorably told.

BioGraphic Novel Series: The 14th Dalai Lama by Tetsu Saiwai

"Children are our most precious treasure.  If well-informed and educated, they can preserve Tibetan culture and further develop it for a hopeful future." 

The 14th Dalai Lama is exactly the type of book which inspired me to specialize, as a librarian, in literature for young people, and the type of book which continues to keep me inspired in this field.  Who could not be thrilled with the opportunity to introduce the world's future generations to such a visionary world figure, presented in such an artistic and engaging manner?  

The 14th Dalai Lama is a product of an independent Japanese manga studio called Emotional Content, which is producing a series of high-quality manga biographies about people the founder considers to be the true superheros of our world, people such as Ghandi, Mother Teresa, and Che Guevara.  Emotional Content's founder, Eiji Han Shimizu, believes that "we can learn the value of compassion, history and philosophy through manga", and considers Emotional Content's manga biographies to be one of Japan's contributions to global political and philosophical discourse. 

This book focuses on the Dalai Lama's early years, from his early childhood until his mid-twenties. These were the primary years of his training in the philosophies of Tibetan Buddhism, and were also the years of China's invasion of Tibet, with all of its attendant political ramifications.  We see the beginning of the Dalai Lama's steadfast maintenance of a philosophy of non-violence, even under extreme political duress.  We also see the passionate love for his country and culture that he has also maintained, even in exile.  This extraordinary childhood and young adulthood is shown vividly and dramatically, and is sure to fascinate young readers interested in peace, spirituality,  world politics, or the lives of great men.