Click

By Linda Sue Park, David Almond, Gregory Maguire, Tim Wynne-Jones, Deborah Ellis, Eoin Colfer,Roddy Doyle, Nick Hornby, Ruth Ozeki, Margo Lanagan.

Wow! Ten of the best YA authors took on the challenge of writing a collaborative novel to support Amnesty International. This novel in ten successive stories is the result, and a gripping page turner it is.

The book opens with a “jump story” by Linda Sue Park, easily the best of its kind I have ever read. Maggie’s grandfather, George Keane, known as “Gee”, a famous international photojournalist, has died. He has left her and her brother enigmatic gifts that are to steer and inspire their lives. The chapter is rich with details of Gee’s travels--the pictures he took, the stories he told his grandchildren--and best of all, is loaded with possibilities and puzzles. The next author must continue the narrative, but not necessarily from the same perspective, location, or even the same time frame. All chapters are titled with a name. They are portraits of people whose lives intersected with Gee’s. But they are also an additional layer of detail for our picture of the photographer’s life.

What is most astonishing about this book, is how tightly woven it is for such a schizophrenic project and how clearly each author’s individual stylistic voice can be heard through the words. Click is especially exciting for anyone interested in, learning about, or teaching writing.
Royalties benefit Amnesty International.

Reviewed by Vivian

Pretty Little Liars

By Sarah Shepard

Flawless
Perfect
Unbelievable

These are not the books to take with you for the waiting room of your admissions interview!

I thought I knew our audience very well. Our teen girls are cool, smart, stylish and nice. So why were these nasty little books flying off the shelves at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park, CA? I just had to investigate . . . . And so I discovered these viciously fun books whose characters break every rule of what a nice girl does with the style and secrecy of those famous and Desperate Housewives Moms like to watch.

Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Hanna have secrets, and their best friend and clique leader Alison was mysteriously murdered three years ago. Now suddenly in their Junior year their wicked past and present bad behavior is used as a weapon against them by a mysterious emailing, text-messaging, blackmailing, humiliating, disappearing person who signs her/his (?) missives with the letter “A”. So many secrets; such a good time.

Ok, Ok, this is not ”high literature,” but the characters and plot are masterfully fleshed out with well-written, nasty wit. We suspect that many of our customers who are perhaps pure of action, if not entirely pure of heart, will find a guilty pleasure in watching these girls behaving badly, getting their just deserts and once in a while getting away with, well, anything.

I confess.

Reviewed by Vivian

Evolution, Me and Other Freaks of Nature

By Robin Brande

Mena fervently believes in God. Her entire life has been embraced by the Church to which her family belongs. But when people from her Church Youth Group, at their pastor’s instigation, harass a young gay student to suicidal depression, Mena feels alone and guilty. She writes the student a beautiful letter of apology. Then her life unravels.

The young man and his family use her letter as evidence in their lawsuits against the Church collectively and against all the families of her Youth Group personally. Mena is ostracized and bullied by her former friends and excluded from her home life by her parents. They break her heart. But in doing so, they also unintentionally thrust her into the world outside her Church and open her mind.

Mena needs to adapt and find a way forward on her own. Cautiously, as she begins High School, she makes new friends, experiences a sweet first romance and begins to judge new ideas for herself. The most provocative of these are those presented by her science teacher, Ms. Shepard, who insists on teaching facts, not opinion. When the curriculum moves into evolution Mena’s classmates alert her ex-pastor who instigates a new hate campaign-- this one on behalf of the ideas of Intelligent Design and against the Theory of Evolution. The confrontation spreads at school, at Church, through the press, Online, at home, and inside Mena’s thoughts.

Eventually Mena affirms her belief in god. But she also sees her adaptation into a larger social environment as one that enables her to be honest with her parents and herself, as one that makes her more capable with her talents, and one that brings her loyal and varied friends. Her life opens.

This is an exciting book.

Reviewed by Vivian