Every Day

Levithan, David. Every Day. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. Print.

Annotation: 

Body Hijacking -- the ultimate identity theft.

Review:

How many of us can say that we’ve ever loved someone entirely, exclusively, for who they are on the inside? 

What would it be like to have a soul, but not have a body? What would life be like if it meant “borrowing” someone else’s body every day, never the same one twice? How could you ever love or be loved, if you were never the same “person” every day?

I thought I wasn’t going to like this. I usually want, and expect, to climb into stories and get to know the protagonist, his people, his setting, and settle in to his interactions and tale with the other characters. The idea that my protagonist was unable to be described, because he didn’t possess a body, really wasn’t working for me. And then it did. Once “A”s voice began to consistently express itself with a trajectory that transcended the bodies he/she was in every day I jumped on board. I consistently thought of “A” as male, perhaps because the first body he was in was male, and he fell in love with that guy’s girlfriend, a heterosexual girl, so I started to categorize “A” as male because of that and because it made his love interest, Rhiannon, the most comfortable.

“A” has been jumping bodies as long as he/she has been conscious of being alive, and it happens at midnight each and every day. “A”’s age seems to correspond to the age of the bodies he/she jumps in, and “A” grows up at the same pace. In the story, “A” is now sixteen. Jumping takes place into a body that is geographically located within a few minutes to a few hours of the last one, so if that body ends up in say, Hawaii that day, on a plane, “A”’s next jump would strand him in Hawaii, unless another body he was in moved that day somewhere else. “A” always tries to maintain the status quo for the person’s life he is borrowing for the day, trying to “do no harm” and even leave things better when leaving than when arriving, if possible. But when “A” ends up in Justin’s body, and meets Rhiannon, he falls hard, and all bets are now off as “A” hijacks each subsequent body to try to stay connected to her, even if just a voyeuristic venture; soon that wears “A” down.

Risking all to reveal his true nature to Rhiannon, “A” strives to connect in a way most of us take for granted -- to love and be loved -- for more than one day. But everything goes terribly wrong; errors are made that set in motion a reckoning that could prove disastrous to both Rhiannon and “A”. How much is it worth? How much is “A” willing to risk? What if there was a way for him/her to stay?

The beauty in “A”’s experience is we are able to see what it is like to “try on” people and truly “walk a mile in their shoes” aka their bodies, to ultimately learn to accept and understand all types of people -- the geek, the beauty queen, the mean girl, the jock, the lesbian, the gay male, the trans-gendered, the fat guy: teens of all shapes, sizes, skin colors, cultures, gender and/or sexual affiliations -- and truly see that our humanity is universal and should be embraced. That life should really be about kindness, connection, love and moral integrity.

Genre Categories: Romance, Multicultural (LGBTQ), Paranormal/Fantasy.

Acceleration

Mcnamee, Graham. Acceleration. New York: Laurel Leaf, Division of Random House Children’s Books. 2005. Print.

Annotation:

How does a punk like Duncan go from unsuccessfully stealing a $600 toilet to trying to catch a serial killer? 

Review:

How Graham Mcnamee manages to cram one big cardiac arrest into a mere 210 tense pages is worth the price of admission on to one very fast subway train. Let’s see if the acceleration kills you.

Characterizations: Human, flawed, funny, tragic, complex across the board. And the protagonist is so very relatable to other teens today. Duncan is just a 17-year-old punk, living in the low-rent part of town, with little future but petty crimes and crappy jobs, but at his core, he’s struggling for more. A haunting past failure acts as a spur to his subconscious flank, making stopping the psycho all the more important to who Duncan is going to ultimately be.

Pacing: Builds and builds, ratcheting up the speed and tension until you want to pop. I literally started this in the morning and read it all the way through without stopping. I haven’t done that with a book in fifteen years.

Plot: Masterful. Every time you think you know where it’s going, it takes a sharp curve. Every scene, every thought, every move accelerates the story to it’s explosive conclusion. 

Genre: Mystery/Thriller, Coming-of-age, Realistic/edgy fiction

Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy

Meyer, L.A. Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc. 2002. Print.

Annotation:

Life on the streets of London in 1797 ain't no place for an orphan - aye, it be a hard and short one. Life on a navel ship ain't no place for a girl, but for a boy it be one helluva adventure. So Mary becomes Jack, and so it begins.

Justification for Nomination:

At first I wasn't going to nominate this for our Mock-Printz, because I started to worry that I shouldn't nominate everything I liked, as the criteria for the Printz demands the highest degree of excellence. I also figured a historical fiction adventure on the high seas would be considered outside the box for fiction popular today, so wouldn't be considered for a Printz. I was just going to say how much I liked it, but still turn it away.

Then I realized that I liked this book so much more than anything else I'd read so far this semester, perhaps because adventures and historical fiction both hold a special place in my heart, so just because they aren't the fiction du jour doesn't mean they should be disqualified for the Printz. So here I go -

Louis A. Meyer really nails the back streets of London in the late 1700's - the smells, death, poverty, dirt and grit, the orphans, body-snatchers, petty thieves and cutthroats. Seen through the eyes and told with the very distinct and believable voice of a young girl named Mary Faber, Bloody Jack transcends black and white words on the page to become full technicolor life in 1797. The cockney British dialect of the lower class flavors Mary with a realism more heartfelt than many of today's modern realistic YA fictions. Forced to grow up and fend for herself at an alarmingly young age, Mary is both resourceful and shrewd, and discovers in short order that cutting off her hair and donning the clothes of her dear departed friend Charlie will afford her the safety and many freedoms not possible as a female. Seizing a rare opportunity to board a naval ship as one of six ship's boys, Mary becomes Jack, and is soon learning the ways of sailors and service, seeing the world, chasing and battling pirates.

But as adolescence intervenes, Mary has more trouble keeping up with what she calls The Deception. They say a woman on board a ship is trouble, and even though no one knows "Jack's" secret, the trouble brews anyway, putting him/her at the center of a convergence of bad blood and revenge.

Jack's voice is true, she explores what it means to be male in a man's world, and feels what it means to be shut out of a lifestyle based on gender. As she matures she discovers her female nature, finds her own moral compass, and puts aside fear and self-preservation in order to save others - all which speak to a coming-of-age theme. The other characters are detailed, nuanced and well-drawn, adding another dimension of realism to Bloody Jack - the friend, the lover, the sage, the foil - so many characters fill out the archetypical roles of the hero's journey. The twists, turns and accidents of fate that land Jack in the middle of events that miraculously save the day are so fun and unexpected, they are a delight to read; I rushed through the pages and couldn't put this down until it was done. I discovered there are nine more in the series, and if it wasn't that I had to read another assigned category, I'd be rushing to be reading them right now. What a rip-roaring and rollicking high sea's ride!

Genre: Historical Fiction, Adventure, Romance, LGBTQ

The Last Time I Wore a Dress

Scholinski, Daphne. With Jane Meredith Adams. The Last Time I Wore a Dress. New York: Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Putnam, Inc., 1997. Print.

Annotation: 

Liking to wear jeans and T-shirts may be a big no-no for women in places like Iraq, but here in the U.S. of A you wouldn't think it would get you committed to a mental institution. But for Daphne, it did. 

Review: 

To say Daphne Scholinski has an indomitable spirit would be an epic understatement. She grew up in an unhappy home, thankfully her parents divorced, but still neither her mother or father seemed to want to be a parent. Her mother went off to "find herself," leaving Daphne and her little sister to live with their dad, who wasn't a caretaker (even for himself). She was a lonely, angry and misunderstood teenager, who was confused regarding her sexuality, but was not crazy. She was understandably depressed; her parents emotionally abandoned her. She was in desperate need of a nurturing figure and the protection a child should expect while being parented in any loose sense of the word; she might not have been molested continuously by stray neighbors and random passers-by if she'd had those things. She certainly wouldn't have been put in a mental institution during her formative teenage years (from 15 to 18), years critical to her mental and social development and formation of identity.

Writing this memoir, Daphne had the help of Jane Meredith Adams; I am unsure how much of the writing was strictly Daphne's, but her voice rings out in such a raw, ripping, painful way that I heard her loud and clear. When talking about her father's girlfriend she wrote: "She couldn't understand why I didn't get along with my father. She looked at him and saw a guy who tickled her on the couch and I saw a guy who beat me with a belt until I stopped crying. So we were in two different movies."  When discussing her disappointment in a new therapist at the hospital she writes, "Even this man with the kind blue eyes wanted me to cover my face with makeup. The bruises underneath my skin (figurative) - didn't he want to put his finger lightly on each one and say, Tell me about it?"  and later she reflects on "Why the thing they cared the most about was whether I acted the part of a feminine young lady. The shame is that the effects of depression, sexual abuse, violence: all treatable. But where I stood on the feminine/masculine scale: unchangeable. It's who I am." She is so honest, so forthcoming, it is amazing to think she could pull down the massive walls of self-protection she must have needed to withstand her harrowing, amazingly painful nightmare to reveal to her readers such a candid account of her teenage years.

At once both funny and horrifying, Daphne's memoir reads like a novel; she is quite graphic with her descriptions, and it is organized with flashbacks and backstory so artfully threaded throughout her narrative that it never bogs down, but feels as immediate and page-turning as any fiction novel, yet it is real. What was done to her is so wrong it raises the hackles of any reader, but also speaks intimately to those teens grappling with questions of sexual identity and preference, and helps them explore themes of rejection, belonging, self-acceptance and above all strength of the spirit.

Daphne Scholinski is an inspiration. 

Genre: Memoir/ Multicultural (GLBTQ) 

Split

Avasthi, Swati. Split. New York: Knoft, Division of Random House, 2010. Print.

Annotation:

It was hard enough watching his mother get hit, so Jace learned just how to deflect his father’s blows from her to himself. Until one day when he’d had enough. And in one moment changed everything.

Review:

Reading a story about physical abuse could be a real downer, but Swati Avasthi inflects her protagonist, Jace Witherspoon with a such strong YA voice so full of ironic humor and such no-holds-barred honesty we are riveted to the page, rooting for Jace, even when he disappoints us. Even when he disappoints himself.

With certainty, many teens painfully exist under the tyranny of physical abuse at home, and no matter where Swati Avasthi did her research, whether it was from personal experience or a very close friend, her writing bleeds on the page, it was so visceral. If all it did was bleed, that would be a lot to take, but she lifts it up, and takes us on a journey with Jace, both figuratively and literally, as he flees his parents, his life and mostly himself, and tries to make some sense from what has happened to him, what could happen to the mother he left behind unprotected, and whatever did happen to his brother, who split years before. 

In one scene, Jace sits alone listening to a fight going on in the apartment next door between his brother and his brother’s girlfriend. As it escalates, Jace tensely waits for the sound of blows and crying, as that has been his only experience with disagreements in his life. When those blows don’t come, but instead the sounds of calm resolution and possibly warm embraces, Jace is stunned, wondering how his brother has broken the cycle of ugliness that has claimed them all so fully. He wants to ask him how, but can’t without admitting he was listening, or revealing the very thing he’s running from.

Jace is such a great character, so multifaceted, flawed, conflicted and confused. His first-person narrative is so honest and reflective it is easy to climb into Jace’s head and identify with him, it’s that immediate. Bonus points for all the other characters being so well-developed the reader feels like a fly on the wall in someone’s true-life hidden nightmare. The setting is littered with many references to fast-food, music and books that claim placement in the here and now - middle-class America. The prose is so good, the dialogue so raw, the theme so gritty, and the pacing so like a suspense-thriller, you will willingly take this quest of self with Jace, a perilous journey that will find him profoundly and forever altered. 

When the dust settles, life can rebuild. 

Genre: Realist/Edgy/Problem Novel, Coming of Age, Sports, Romance

one of the those hideous books where the mother dies

Sones, Sonya. one of the those hideous books where the mother dies. New York: Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2004. Print.

Annotation:

With a name like Ruby, you'd think going to live in LA with a famous movie star would be a cake walk -- even if his name is Whip. 

Justification for Rejection:

Ruby Milliken, a fifteen-year-old girl from Boston, has to leave her boyfriend and best friend to go live with her father in Los Angeles after her mother dies. Rich and handsome, Whip Logan is a famous movie star that somehow is her father. It seems he divorced Ruby's mother soon after she was born, and she's never met him. If you have to have your mother die, acquiring a lifestyle of the rich and famous doesn't seem like such a bad consolation prize. 

It isn't. 

Ruby is a stereotypical teenage middle-class suburban white girl; her dad is a stereotypical heart-throb Hollywood movie star. Having left her mother after Ruby was born, Whip Logan is actually a nice guy that was just abiding her mother's wishes, but now that Ruby's mother has died, he wants to make it up to Ruby. She gets to live in Hollywood's version of a castle. She attends an exclusive high school for kids of the rich and famous. But Ruby misses her best friend and boyfriend back in Boston, who both miss her back, but predictably turn to each other for comfort (like any reader wouldn't see THAT coming). 

Ruby bonds with her dad's "personal assistant" who is a great guy and bridges the gap for Ruby to forge a relationship with her forgiveness-seeking father. The gay assistant turns out (of course), to be her dad's lover, and they all live happily ever after, (like any reader wouldn't see THAT coming). The fact that Ruby seems to miss her boyfriend and best friend more than she misses her recently deceased mother makes this verse novel miss the mark completely, abandoning one of the best opportunities to delve deeply into serious subject matter and take this into poetic territory. 

This verse novel also doesn't rhyme, have rhythm, isn't in iambic pentameter, doesn't possess any great prose, and would just be a little novel ready to be a Disney Channel movie if the sentences were simply formatted in paragraphs instead of dangling and left-justified with liberal use of white space in order to look like a poem.  

This verse novel is all shiny candy-cane surface. Thumb's down.

Genre: Poetry/Verse Novel 

Angus, Thongs and Full-frontal Snogging: Confessions of Georgia Nicolson

Rennison, Louise. Angus, Thongs and Full-frontal Snogging: Confessions of Georgia Nicolson. New York: Harper Tempest, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 1999. Print.

Annotation: 

In Georgia's mind, the nub and thrust of it is all that tutting is "like living in a house full of chickens dressed in frocks and trousers." If she could just ship off her parents, and all the teachers at her school, life would be fabbity-fab-fab. Oh, and off with Wet Lindsay too, she's such a prat.

Justification for Printz: 

Written in diary entries made as frequently as every two minutes, 14-year-old Georgia's stream-of-consciousness entries pour forth in a strong first person voice. One forgets completely this is a work of fiction and soon breathlessly turns the page to jump on the ride that is Georgia's day-to-day existence in England. Completely absorbing, mad-cap British slang litters Georgia's narrative wake like a comedic crime-scene begging to be solved. Thank goodness for the glossary in the back for us mere Americans. Readers will soon be adopting such fabulous words as knickers, erlach, snog, tosser, prat, strop and nervy-b.

Completely absorbed in herself, Georgia disrespects the adults in her life by assigning them all sorts of demeaning nicknames: her mom and dad are Mutti and Vati, the evil neighbors who hate Angus, her even-more-evil cat, are dismissively known as Mr. and Mrs. Nextdoor, the groundskeeper at school is Elvis, and the headmaster is Slim, when her very huge size trembles as anything but. School is aka Stalag 14. Her biggest concerns are her nose, bleaching her hair blond, and learning how to snog properly. Luckily there is a boy offering free lessons, which soon springboard Georgia into snog-worthy readiness for when the Sex God comes along. She just has to get rid of Wet Lindsay.

Georgia's adventures with her mad-cap pals, the Ace-Gang, are a side-splitting laugh-a-minute, as her textbook teen traits: endearing teenage clumsiness, complete lack of filters, and total subversion of authority, are portrayed with groundbreaking British humor, buffing the rough edges off a tough time in life for any teen reader. Angus, Thongs and Full-frontal Snogging also provides insight to any adult trying to scrape clear a dirty, unused and forgotten window of the past for understanding to the trials and concerns of being a teen.

Louise Rennison pulls off much in a funny little book with little pretty prose and no finger-wagging lessons to preach. She allows teens to laugh at themselves at a time that often feels like there is absolutely nothing to laugh about. 

End result: true catharsis.

PS - There are nine more books in the series, each more funny than the last. 

PSS - Georgia actually makes a character arc by the end of them, and grows up and sees the value in what (and who) is right in front of her.

PSSS - You should really read them. Everyone needs a laugh.

PSSSS - Soon you too will be "away laughing on a fast camel."

Genre Categories: Printz Honor/Humor.