My biggest question remains: why all the butt-smacking?

Pop by Gordon Korman


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The football pre-season starts next Saturday. Do you want to know why I know this? It isn't because I personally LOVE the gridiron or even know why it is called "gridiron." No, it is because from August to February I live with a football junkie. I get to hear all about the draft, the fantasy league winners and losers, and our TV is taken over by pointless commentary after pointless commentary. Madden0whatever is played non-stop. As a not-particularly sporty person there are only two ways to deal with this situation. One is to protest, to complain, to throw up one's hands and move out. The other is to try and figure out what all the fuss is about. Oh, I still roll my eyes whenever I get treated to a 10 minute diatribe on why Adrian Peterson is the best running back EVAR, but I also watch games and ask questions about why something was called this way or that. Or, what that flag means, or why they got an extra point, etc. I feel like I'm getting to understand a little bit more about the game and its appeal. A little.

Unlike me, football is Marcus Jordan's life. He and his mom have just moved to a new town to escape his fascist dad and so his mom can take pictures of rocks. He starts practicing in a park and forms an eccentric and erratic friendship with a middle-aged guy named Charlie, who is extremely spry and who teaches Marcus more about football in just a few weeks than all of his years on a team. But, Marcus ends up covering for his new friend when he discovers Charlie's erratic behavior isn't just from a quirky personality.

Along the way Marcus barely squeaks onto the football team. He wants to be QB, but his new high school's team is undefeated and record breaking and so Marcus has to battle their unwillingness to mess with status quo and the QB, Troy, who drove them to victory. Troy hates Marcus immediately, and it doesn't help that Troy's on and off again girlfriend is interested in Marcus, and Marcus is VERY interested in Alyssa too.

So immediately we've got a complicated plot, told in a straightforward manner, by a kid who just wants to Do The Right Thing. Marcus and all the characters are well developed. The story draws you in from the first page. The plot never slows down and the conflicts are very real. My only complaint with the book is that the "mystery" of Charlie goes on a little too long. I find it hard to believe Marcus wouldn't have started asking pertinent questions earlier in the story and figuring out answers earlier on too. At any rate, this book has romance, fights, pranks, friendship, brain-injury awareness, kidnapping, and lots and lots of Football. It is the ultimate blitz of a book! Even for a wannabe fan like me.

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2 posts in 1 day: Review of "Raven"

Raven by Allison van Diepen


My rating: 3 (and 1/2) of 5 stars
Even though this book is a completely engrossing and resplendent read it didn't get more stars because I have no idea what an airtrack, suicide, 6-steps or any of the rest of these terms mean in relationship to breakdancing. Since these and other breakdancing terms are liberally sprinkled throughout the book without any explanation of what they mean or how the moves look I had a hard go of staying in the story at times. While this technique sped up the action of the breakdancing scenes, it made it impossible for me to envision what they were doing.

OTHERWISE. I totally loved this book. It was a fast paced read with a engrossing main character, Nicole (Raven), who doesn't sound like anyone else in YA ficion that I can think of...and her New York doesn't sound like any other New York that I've read. She has this group of friends that is not bound by anything except maybe age range and love of breakdancing. I like that in a novel (And if you do as well then you should maybe also take part in this book challenge.

Of course, this book is about more than breakdancing. It is about love and friendship and family and living forever vs living as a human. The immortals (Jiang Shi) in the book are conflicted by their immortality and how they attained and keep it. Though none of them, even the leader/mastermind who is hiding things, comes off as evil; their enemies don't come off as evil either. Overzealous yes, evil no. I think that might be my favorite thing about the book, the characters, even those without a lot of "screen time" feel totally realistic and multi-dimensional without a lot of random crap thrown in to make them that way. It is a good story, mostly well told.

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Notes from the Midnight Driver

I should preface my review by saying it isn't entirely impartial. A few weeks ago the School Media Specialist at one of the middle schools I work with called and told me that Jordan Sonnenblick would be there the next day for their one book one school author visit for "Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie" and would I like to come hear him speak? Well, I'd been meaning to get over to the middle school around then anyway...so of course I said yes.
Confession: NftMD is the first Sonnenblick book I've read. I have a huge pile of stuff to read at any given moment and the stuff I want to read sometimes gets pushed to the back. Plus, at my library "Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie" is ALWAYS checked out and I'm on hold, alright? The point is that I got to meet Jordan Sonnenblick and he was energetic and passionate and fantastic. And then I got to watch him speak to a big group of 6th graders and when he called two of them out for talking during his presentation you could almost see the middle school teacher he used to be rising up from the depths of the author he'd become. I'm glad I got the chance to meet him before I read any of his books actually. I was far less liable to trip over my own tongue trying to heap on my blundering brand of praise. I mean, I'm the awkward librarian and it only gets worse when I'm a fan. (You should have seen it when I met Caroline B. Cooney, oh man, talk about gauche.)


Anyway, here's my review of a book by a very nice guy:
Notes from the Midnight Driver by Jordan Sonnenblick

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
We all do stupid things. Alex did one of the stupidest. He got angry, got drunk, and decided that this was the perfect time to steal the car and yell at his dad for making him angry.


Luckily for Alex, he didn't get far and the only casualty was the neighbor's expensive* garden gnome.

Alex gets punished, super punished, by being forced to do community service at a retirement home. He's now company for one particular old man for three hours every Wednesday night until he works off 100 hours. And then the fun starts. Let's be honest here folks, none of what I'm telling you about this plot is going to surprise you. It is the feel good tearjerker of my night. And I did cry, whooboy. I bawled through the last few pages there. There are some characteristic Sonnenblick elements, even characters you might recognize, and that is what makes the story great. It is a familiar story, well and humorously told, and in a unique voice. To my mind, that's better than what 95% of books I read even come close to providing.


*$374 seemed expensive to Alex and to me. I think maybe he killed the Travelocity gnome and now we must all roam alone.


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