Anything But Typical

Jason is a sixth-grader with autism. This means that he sometimes has trouble doing things that "neurotypicals" do naturally, such as reading people's facial expressions, handling crowds and loud noises, or coping with unstructured events. He is teased by his classmates and even by his own cousins for acting strangely, but they just don't understand the way that Jason's brain works. Jason takes some solace by writing his own stories and posting them online. It is here that he meets Phoenixbird, a girl who talks to him online about their writing. When Jason has the opportunity to attend a writing conference sponsored by the website where he posts his stories, he is excited to learn more about writing. But he is also very nervous when he learns that Phoenixbird will also be attending. How will react when she meets him in person? How will he react when he finally sees her? Will she react just as badly as his classmates when she learns of his autism? How will her reaction affect their friendship and even Jason's writing?

Jason will face all of these questions and more in the sunning story Anything But Typical by Norah Raleigh Baskin. This was a fairly quick read, but when I was finished I felt like I had been exposed to far more emotion than the books nearly 200 pages should be able to allow. The author has done an amazing job of getting inside the head of a child with autism, following his unique train of thought and making this condition accessible to those of us who know little or nothing about autism.

Anything But Typical is definitely my favorite book so far for 2009. It is a beautiful story about coping with family and friends and the desperate need that all middle-schoolers have to fit in.

Overall Grade: A+

Cute Kid Quotes

Here are a couple of really great/adorable/hilarious things that I heard come out of the mouths of children at the library this week:

"Excuse me, but do you have any books here?"

"I have to wait until I grow up, and then I can learn to write my name."



Meanwhile, our Summer Reading Program has officially begun! My library has been very busy getting kids registered, and in just a couple of days we'll get to see what all of these kids have been reading since school let out. If you haven't done so already, remember to go and visit your own local public library and ask about their summer programs for kids - and for grown-ups!

The Chosen One

Kyra is not yet fourteen years old, but she has already done a number of things that would not be tolerated in the religious society where she lives. She makes regular visits outside her compound's walls to visit the Mobile Library on Wheels and read the books that are forbidden by The Prophet. She has secret clandestine meetings with Joshua, the boy who she hopes to someday marry. But despite these transgressions, Kyra is very happy living with her father, his three wives, and her twenty brothers and sisters and does not normally question the religious traditions of The Chosen Ones. All of this changes, however, when The Prophet decrees that Kyra must marry her uncle Hyram - a man who is more than 60 years old and who already has six wives. Desperate not to be forced into this unwelcome match, Kyra must make a choice. She can choose to stay close to her family and enjoy the life she has always known...or she can take a chance and strike out on her own, choosing a life for herself instead of one dictated by The Prophet and his Apostles. Neither choice will be easy, and both bring with them great dangers. Will Kyra accept the life that has been handed to her by The Chosen Ones? Or will she strike out on her own and forge her own destiny?

This was an incredibly powerful book. Author Carol Lynch Williams has done an incredible job of creating a character from a polygamist society which most readers will have little familiarity with and making it very real to the reader. Kyra is a powerful character, and the way that she is torn between the life that readers will want her to find and the life she has always known is incredibly believable. It can be very difficult to balance the moral values of the reading audience with those of characters who have very different standards, and Williams managed to do it perfectly in a way that keeps us rooting for Kyra to succeed, but also shows us how a person who has never known anything else would really feel if forced to make the choice. Parts of this book were incredibly difficult to read because of the violence and injustice that Kyra and her community face, but readers will keep turning the pages of this riveting story and emerge with feelings that match Kyra's strange combination of extreme sorrow and empowerment.

Overall Grade: A

The Girliest Book in the Library

The other day, I had what was quite possibly the funniest legitimate reference/reader's advisory question ever. A boy who seemed to be about 11 or 12 years old asked me to give him the girliest book in the library. Apparently he needed the book for a bet. I decided that while I probably didn't really want to know more about the bet it was probably mostly harmless, so I found the girliest book I could think of: A Princess Primer. This is a large pink and purple book laden with jewels that teaches young girls everything they could possibly want to know about being a princess. How much girlier can you get?

The boy agreed that the book was, indeed, very girly. But it wasn't quite what he was looking for - he wanted something closer to his own reading level. I wasn't quite sure what to make of this at first. I bought myself some thinking time by explaining that often, when girls get a little older, they're not necessarily into really girly things like princesses and ponies and fairies anymore. Then I remembered some of the really girly series that we have - things like Rainbow Magic and Tinkerbell. I took him over to the paperback spinners and we talked about some of the series that are written with girls in mind. This boy seemed pretty happy with that, so I left him to browse through these books.

About 10 or 15 minutes later, the boy came back to the desk with a big smile on his face, eager to show me his final selection. But what did he pick? Nothing that I showed him, that's for sure! The book he found came from the YA shelves, which are conveniently located near the spinners where I left him. The title? Braless in Wonderland by Debbie Reed Fischer. I'm not sure if the boy read the synopsis (the story is apparently about a girl who goes to Miami to launch her modeling career) or if he was simply taken with the title. Regardless of the reasons for his selection, this boy was clearly very proud of himself for finding such as "girly" book.

Ah, the minds of 11-year-old boys never cease to amaze me...

Jolted: Newton Starker's Rules for Survival

The bad news: Except for his spiteful great-grandmother, Newton Starker is the last of his line because of a strange curse - everyone in Newton's family has been struck by lightning and killed.

The good news: Newton has plans to ensure that he does not meet the same fate. He enrolls in in the Jerry Potts Academy of Survival, a school where the curriculum is focused around learning to take care of oneself and survive under harsh circumstances. Newton is sure that this school will be able to teach him what he needs to know to stay alive.

Between constantly checking the weather reports, making sure his kilt (the school uniform) is buckled correctly, and trying to make new friends, Newton certainly has his hands full. But will he really be able to break his family's generations-long string of bad luck? Will survival training really help, or will he need a little help from another source instead? And what does a little pig named Joséphine have to do with any of it?

The premise of this book and some of the characters are a little wonky, but it's really a lot of fun. The chapters are only a few pages long at most, making this a real page-turner as you absorb this story is short, satisfying chunks. Intermingled in this story are also sections from the Jerry Potts Survival Handbook, e-mails from Headmaster Dumont, and Newton's own list of survival rules. While I do wish that the survival school itself would have been played up more and greater descriptions of the classes included in the story by author Arthur Slade, Newton's own growth and the way he learns to accept love and friendship remain a touching focus to the narrative. And sweet little Joséphine, Newton's pet pig, will find probably find a very soft place to nestle in your heart.

Overall Grade: B+

Black and White

I've been meaning to do a post like this for a few months now, ever since it was announced that this year's Caldecott Medal was given to illustrator Beth Krommes for her work on the book The House in the Night. Often when we think of picture books, we imagine books filled with vibrant colors that will attract kids' attention. But there are lots of great books done in black and white as well! Here are just a few:

The House in the Night, written by Susan Marie Swanson and illustrated by Beth Krommes, is a cumulative rhyme (think of songs like "The Farmer in the Dell" and "There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea" for other example of cumulative rhymes). As the story progresses, we follow a child through the house to her bedroom and watch her open a book and journey out into the night sky on the backs of the birds that emerge from it. This is a quiet, soothing bedtime story, and the black and white illustrations, which look like woodcuts, show the darkness of the night. However, some objects (the key, a lamp, the moon) glow with golden light, shining brightly against the blackness and creating a cozy space within this house.

Overall Grade: A

Another Caldecott Medal goes to author and illustrator Kevin Henkes for his book Kitten's First Full Moon. In this story, a kitten sees the full moon for the first time. Not understanding what it is, the kitten imagines that the moon is a giant bowl of milk and sets off to find it. The intrepid kitten unfortunately can never seem to catch up to the moon, and it is always out of reach. Will she ever find her bowl of milk? The illustrations in this story are done in gouache and colored pencil, which allows some absolutely brilliant shading that shows the dark of the night along with the light of the moon. Something about the big illustrations and the use of white space on the pages with words also makes this book feel very large, just like the world that Kitten finds herself exploring. This is a very sweet picture book that makes for a soothing read-aloud.

Overall Grade: A+

Chris Van Allsburg has done a lot of great picture books over the years, many of which are done in black and white. Among my favorites of his books is Zathura, the sequel to the award-winning book Jumanji. This this story, Walter is a young boy who is fed up with his younger brother Danny. But when the two of them find the game of Jumanji and a hidden second board, the two find themselves in a wild outer space adventure filled with such challenges as evil robots and lots of trouble with gravity. Will the two be able to finish the game? These black and white illustrations are highly textured when showing the inside of Walter and Danny's house, but the sky becomes an even, milky black when showing the vastness of outer space. Unlike the other books previously mentioned, the black and white illustrations are not necessarily soothing and the textured surfaces add excitement and interest to this adventure story.

Overall Grade: A