Derby Girl

Last weekend I had the coolest experience ever: I went to see some roller derby. The concept of the sport is to score points by flying around a track on roller skates faster than your opponent. However, both teams also have a series of blockers whose job is to get in your way, knocking you to the floor if possible. It's exciting and intense and a whole lot of fun to watch.

Part of my excitement comes from the fact that several months ago I was able to read the awesome teen novel Derby Girl by Shauna Cross, which features roller derby within its pages. In this story, Bliss is totally indie rock, but her mother is totally a pageant queen. She feels like nothing exciting will ever happen to her in her small Texas hometown, which is way too lame for her sensibilities. Bliss finally thinks that she's found everything she's looking for when she discovers roller derby in Austin, where the girls have tattoos, awesome costumes, and wicked names like Malice in Wonderland. There's even amazingly hot guitar-playing boys around to enjoy. But will she be able to hide her love of the derby from her mother? How will she balance the derby and her new boy toy with her best friend? And what will happen when said boy toy leaves to go on tour with his band?

This is a fun, fast read that, while fairly generic in its themes (mother/daughter conflict, teen rebellion, betrayal of best friend, first love) is nonetheless edgy and interesting. This book was my first exposure to roller derby and while I really wish that the book would have shows us more of the action on skates and explained the rules a bit more clearly, it gave us just enough to pique my interest. But to really discover roller derby, take it from me: Go and see it yourself! It's something that really does need to be experienced in person.

Overall Grade: B

Will the movie Whip It (staring Ellen Page) live up to the book's expectations? Surpass them? I'll let you know soon, pending the upcoming release of the film to DVD.

2010 ALA Youth Media Awards

It's that time of year again! Just a few days ago the ALSC, the children's division of the American Library Association, announced their choices for their prestigious awards. I'd like to take a moment to recognize the great titles that won the two big awards, the Newbery and the Caldecott Medals. To see a full list of winners for all of the awards, including the awards for easy readers, non-fiction, and audiobooks, check out this link.

Newbery Medal
The Newbery Medal is awarded every year to, "the most outstanding contribution to children's literature." A few weeks ago I tried to predict who the winners in this category would be. Exciting news - I called the big winner! The gold medal went to Rebecca Stead's wonderful novel When You Reach Me, a story of a girl in 1979 who goes through a strange series of events involving her former best friend, a mysterious letter, and perhaps even time travel. This was definitely a great choice for the award as it was captivating and beautifully written, giving a bit of a nod to well-loved favorite A Wrinkle in Time.

While I did not manage to predict ANY of the honor books (and in fact somehow managed to miss reading several of them) the books selected are, from what I've heard through the grapevine, worthy choices. The honor books are:

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick

Caldecott Medal
The Caldecott Medal is given every year to the, "most distinguished American picture book for children." This year's big winner is a stunning piece of work - The Lion and the Mouse by highly acclaimed author and illustrator Jerry Pinkney. This wordless retelling of Aesop's popular fable features gorgeous pencil and watercolor illustrations and invites readers to tell the story in their own words.

The honor books are:

All the World, illustrated by Marla Fraze and written by Liz Garton Scanlon.

Red Sings from the Treetops: A Year in Colors, illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski and written by Joyce Sidman.

My Thoughts
This year's selection of winners are all excellent. The one big surprise that I saw was in awarding the Newbery Honor to The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg. While an excellent book in its own right, I really thought that certain other books were better written and more worth of the award. But oh well - surprises like this keep things interesting.

Congratulations to the winners!

Shiver

When she was very young, Grace was attacked by wolves that lived in the forest behind her house. She survived, seemingly rescued by a yellow-eyed wolf from the pack. Ever since she has had a bit of an obsession with the wolves, especially with her yellow-eyed savior. When another boy from her high school is attacked by wolves, Grace worries that her wolves will be in danger. And then she finds a boy with the same eyes as her wolf on her back porch, shot by hunters...

Sam is a werewolf. During the summer he takes on his human form, and when the weather grows cold he becomes a wolf again. Unfortunately, as time goes on his time in his human body becomes shorter and shorter. It seems likely that this will be his last summer before he remains a wolf forever. Will he and Grace be able to find a way for him to hold on to his humanity so that they can be together?

This book plays on the popular themes of supernatural romance. Maggie Stiefvater's novel contains many elements that will appeal to Twilight fans - a dreamy boy who struggles to maintain his humanity despite his life as a supernatural being, a girl who has largely uninvolved parents and does a lot of cooking, and an incredible amount of romantic tension between the two that, with the exception of one fade-to-black scene, is largely chaste. Plot is unfortunately somewhat lacking as much the the middle of the book focuses on Grace and Sam's budding romance, and the characters are not as strong or developed as they could be. The good news - the end of the book is excellent and everything comes together perfectly. This is the first in an expected trilogy, and I'm hopeful that the upcoming sequels will be a bit more interesting and focus more on the wolves now that the characters have all been introduced.

Overall Grade: B

Speak

While most of Syracuse's 14-year-olds are excited about starting high school, Melinda is dreading it. She has lost all of her friends after calling the police at a huge end-of-summer party just a few weeks before classes started, becoming a social outcast. Since things aren't going well, Miranda builds a hideout in an abandoned janitor's closet, begins to skip classes, and becomes more and more silent as time goes on. Her only solice is in her art class, where her teacher Mr. Freeman encourages her to add emotion to her work.

But as time goes on, Melinda can no longer ignore what happened to her on the night of the party. When her former best friend Rachel begins dating Andy, the boy who was involved in the incident at the party, Melinda realizes that she needs to warn her about what kind of person Andy really is. But will she find the strength to speak out? And if she does, will Rachel - or anyone else - believe her?

This is a book that I've been meaning to read for a long time, but had a difficult time actually picking up. There are plenty of awards and five-star reviews to recommend Speak (acclaimed YA author Laurie Halse Anderson's debut novel), including a Prinz Honor medal. But due to the content, I just never wanted to pick up the book. It seemed depressing and difficult. And in a lot of ways, this book is difficult - not in terms of language, but in terms of the complicated issues that it deals with. However, this is really an important book, probably because of the difficult issues that it deals with. And even if it is hard to get through at some points and your heart aches as Melinda struggles to deal with her depression and isolation, the writing is so beautiful that it will ease readers though Melinda's flood of emotions. There's plenty of great symbolism to be found that reflects Melinda's state of mind, and I don't know that I've cheered so hard for a character to do something as deceptively simple as speak. This book made me feel stronger for having read it because of the challenged it provided. A definite must-read for any teen.

Overall Grade: A+