Movember: It's all about the moustache (and mental health)

As we near the end of Movember (Moustache and November slid neatly together), I thought I might highlight a book I've read recently that this strange month of growing moustaches is about--men's mental health.  I can quickly come up with 15+ books about teenage girls and suicide, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or anxiety but I pretty much came up with zilch for teenage guys.  Which is weird considering that for many years in the U.S., the suicide rate has been about 4 times higher among men than among women.  Movember is all about men and their health--cancer, mental illness and healthy lifestyle are the main focuses but the general idea is to build awareness of mental health, to motivate guys to take care of themselves, and to destigmatize seeking medical help of any kind!  It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini is just that--kind of a funny story about a teenage guy who is suffering from depression and fighting suicide.

I am large, I contain multitudes

It's hard to describe Marcus Sedgwick's "Midwinterblood" in any other terms other than possibly one of the most amazing books I've read in a long time. Pardon me for being blunt. I tried coming up with some sort of cute/interesting intro to lead up to my review but nothing seemed to fit. There is absolutely no way to introduce it outside of it being amazing. At this point I'm not even sure how to describe the plot of the book and what happens without spoiling massive quantities of it; everything is connected to everything else in some deep way. The best way to describe it would be with a small quote from the book:

It cannot be... that when our life is run, we are done. There must be more to man than that, surely? That we are not just one, but a multitude. (p. 250)

So it is that on a small Scandavian island where the mythical Dracula orchid grows, Eric and Merle, two souls in love, find then lose each other over and over and over again. Seven different stories weave together their tale of love surviving through the ages, through vampires and magic and war, going back to a time unrecorded by history. Only at the very end does the whole story become completely clear.  Only then do you see the end that is really the beginning.

~The Stacked Librarian

P.S. The title of the blog post is a Walt Whitman quote. It's from "Song of Myself." If you like Whitman, definitely read this book!

(Stupendously) Bad Trip

There are some people who are fantasy people. There are some people who are sci-fi people. Then there are people like Platte F. Clark who have decided why not have both? In the same book. At the same time. Which is one reason why "Bad Unicorn" has to be one of my top book picks this year.

Middle school is hard enough when your mom doesn't understand your gaming obsession and you have to watch out for a bully called the Kraken, but then Max Spencer discovers the weird book he's had for years is magic. Like, real magic. And he's the heir to the greatest sorcerer of all, Maximilian Sporazo. It gets even worse when he accidentally transports himself, his friends Dirk and Sarah, and his local gaming store owner Dwight hundreds of years into the future... Meanwhile, a sorcerer in another realm is looking to get a hold of Max and his book. He recruits Princess, the most feared unicorn in the realm, to help him. But how can you track someone who's time traveled? And how exactly does one get back to the right time let alone fight a carnivorous unicorn (in the past AND the future), especially when you've only just discovered you can do magic?

With a bad tempered zombie duck, man-eating unicorns, golf-worshipping monks, more zombies, scary dragons, robot reality TV, and a talking sentient centipede game, "Bad Unicorn" is hysterical and awesome in so many amazing ways. Go read it. Now.

Bad Impressions

When I was a kid I was rather creepily obsessed with serial killers. Some girls' fave movie involves a princess in a fluffy dress; mine involved Hannibal Lector and Jodi Foster. Interestingly enough, I've never been able to take the gruesomeness of those kinds of books so my reading in it has been limited so I moved on to slightly less creepy reading. This has been helped by the fact that not many teen books revolve around serial killers... until now. I discoverd Barry Lyga's "I Hunt Killers" on an award list and had to check out the serial killer book for teens. It's like Dexter when he was in high school.

Seventeen-year-old Jazz's childhood was filled with lots bonding time with dad, bed time stories, and toys. Except, his bonding time was cleaning up after his dad's kills, bed time stories of the murders, and his father's "toys" -- trophies stolen from the victims. When his father was finally caught, Jazz had spent his childhood being groomed to become a special kind of serial killer. He's spent the last four years trying forget, to have a normal life: he goes to public school, has a girlfriend, and spends his time hanging out with his best friend. Then the murders start. Now he has to accept the horrible gift his father gave him to track down the murderer: the ability to think like a serial killer. But what will that do to a boy raised to think of humans as prey? And now his memory is slowly bringing back horrible images, images that could lead to a terrible revelation....

Tucson Festival of Books Author Spotlight: Jacqueline Woodson

If you like realistic fiction about teenagers with problems, like Crank by Ellen Hopkins or Monster by Walter Dean Myers, you should pick up something by Jacqueline Woodson. You're in for a treat. She'll be a guest speaker at the Tucson Festival of Books this year, which is a huge gathering on the U of A campus to celebrate books, authors, and reading. Here's their page for teens.              

The first book I read by her was If You Come Softly. It's a sad, kind of Romeo and Juliet-esque story. Jeremiah's black, and Ellie's white. They meet at a private school and fall in love without being prepared for how society views their relationship. On her website, she writes that it was inspired by a poem by Audre Lord, which begins:

If you come softly  

as the wind within the trees

you may hear what I hear 

         see what sorrow sees.

Waiting for the World to End: Armageddon Summer

We're running out of time, if the world's going to end in 2012, as a few people are insisting. In this book, meet two ordinary teenagers like you, who both have parents who share a belief that the world's going to end, and drag them off to a remote mountain to greet the end of the world with their cult. I won't tell you if the world ends or not, but either way, you'll be in suspense about how Armageddon Summer ends!

All Things Necromancer

How could I resist a book with the title, Hold Me Closer, Necromancer?!  Really, how could anyone?  In fact, I loved this book so much that I thought I had already blogged about it but NO--I checked and despite some gaps in my blog technology skills, it appears that I didn't!  So now I can lure you into reading it AND the sequel, Necromancing the Stone, both by Lish McBride.  Do I believe there is such a thing as necromancy?  No.  But these are the funniest books about teens I have read in a long time, and McBride does a fantastic job of giving the fantasy lover something unique, interesting, and hilarious (meaning she doesn't take herself as seriously as most fantasy writers)! 

A Teen-Approved eBook

Okay, yeah, I admit that sometimes it's hard to find a good teen eBook that doesn't have a ton of holds on it already. Here's one that shows up under the regular fiction eBooks that I bet you'll love, though: When I Found You by Catherine Ryan Hyde. It's based on a short story called "The Man Who Found You in the Woods." Listen to a podcast of that story here. (If you don't want to read it on your computer, phone, tablet, or eReader, we also have some of her other books in the regular print format, including the one that inspired the movie Pay It Forward.)

I've done this special event for teens called Story Talk a few times now, first with our teen volunteers, and then with some inmates at the Juvenile Detention Center. It's kind of like a short story book club: we read a story out loud and then discuss it. This story has been one of the favorites both times: it starts with something straight out of the headlines: a man finds a newborn baby abandoned in the woods in the dead of winter.

My father's a serial killer, how about yours?!

What would it be like to be raised by a serial killer?  Not a question I ask myself very often but one that must have come up to Barry Lyga, the author of "I Hunt Killers" (I guess after he explored all his questions about superheroes and goth girls, Lyga moved on!).  Jasper "Jazz" Dent lives in the small town of Lobo's Nod, trying to have a normal life after his father was convicted of one hundred and twenty three murders about four years ago.  He is dealing pretty well with school, his girlfriend Connie, his wise-cracking hemophiliac friend Howie, and his crazy-but-harmless grandmother--until dead bodies minus a few fingers start showing up.

Middle School Mayhem

I read so many books that sometimes it's really hard to think about what to write about for this blog; other times, the universe just seems to pull out a topic and advertise it in neon lights. With arrows. And a fog horn. I was talking with a middle school teacher the other day and she was saying how there are so few good books for middle school students. My library is also currently working on a program called Middle School Mayhem. So obviously my post needs to be some of my TOP middle school reads. Without further ado, my fave middle school reads:

Flights of Fantasy

The best part about anthologies and short story collections is finding an author you wouldn't have encountered otherwise.  And then devouring everything else that author or artist has ever written.  So pick up a copy of Flight, any of the volumes, and dive in.  There's something for everyone in this collection of indie comics edited by Kazu Kibuishi. 

The library has several comics by artists who've contributed short stories to Flight.

A Deadly Serious Cat and Mouse Comic

Maus, by Art Spiegelman, was the first graphic novel I ever read. I was about twelve, I think, and I snuck it out of my brother's collection of comic books. There was just something different about it that caught my interest: it was a real book, heavy, with binding and a hard cover. Yeah, it was a comic book. But it wasn't like the Spiderman or Superman comics that I'd glanced at and found boring. It was a new way to look at a sad, serious subject: the Holocaust.

There's always another side to the story

SPOILER ALERT

A book written in first person can be tricky—if I don’t trust what the narrator says happens then the story never really sucks me in.  Despite all the rave reviews, that’s how I felt about Gayle Forman’s If I Stay .  The narrator is Mia, a 17-year-old very talented cellist, whose life is ripped apart after a horrific accident. Her family's car is struck, and her mother, father, and only sibling, her younger brother, are killed. She finds herself standing outside of her body trying desperately to comprehend what happened. She is in a coma, suspended between life and death. As her body lies mangled in the hospital and her extended family and friends rally to her side, she reviews her life and comes to realize that it's up to her to choose whether to stay or leave.

In Where She Went, Forman decides to do what I often wish authors would do—she tells the rest of the story (overlapping with the first) and this time, we have Mia’s boyfriend Adam as narrator.  His story picks up three years later and Adam’s life has both hit the big time and fallen completely to ruins. After the car accident that nearly killed Mia and the choices she made upon recovery (life=yes, Adam=no), he has poured all his heartbreak into songwriting, gotten the fame he always wanted, and become a pill-popping, angst-ridden shadow of his former self. The emotion in his story seems so much more genuine, rawer and angry, yet he still can look at himself and laugh. Ironically enough, from his perspective I learned to like and understand Mia more as well. He is in New York, waiting for his band’s first big tour or Europe, when he sees an advertisement for Mia's recital and decides to go, just so he can see her one more time.  I think I’ve given you enough spoilers for one post, so you will just have to read what Adam and Mia go through in the next twenty four hours yourself!

Anagrams, Footnotes, and the Mathematical Theorem of Love

Colin Singleton has had nineteen (by his reckoning) relationships.  Of those 19 relationships, they all had one thing in common.  They all involved a girl named Katherine.

Having just been dumped by Katherine the Ninteenth, Colin finds himself on a road trip with his best friend, Hassan.  Ending in Gutshot, TN, the two explore the gravesite of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, meet a girl named Lindsey, and Colin spends the summer trying to find a mathematical theorem of love and relationships.

What my description isn't capturing is both the realness of the characters and the humor of the storytelling.  An Abundance of Katherines by John Green is full of weird facts and trivia, odd anagrams, and an entire appendix devoted to the mathematical functions described in the book.  It is unspeakably nerdy, in the best kind of way.  But what can I say?  I have a soft spot for footnotes in novels. 

Speed Reading

You know what I hate? Lengthy tomes that actually take the full three weeks to read. I'll admit to having the general attention span of a sugar-high chipmunk & I want books that are either 1) so interesting & awesome that I finish it in a week or 2) so short it would be impossible to NOT finish it in a week. Stickman Odyssey, an Epic Doodle: Book One, Chopsticks," & Tina's Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary all took an hour each to read. No joke. Three books in three hours. Why are they such quick reads? Cause thanks to the brilliance of creative authors these books mix multimedia, drawings, comics, poetry, and photography to tell a story rather than just words

Best name ever? Possibly

Despite the fact that I talk The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: The Pox Party up all the time, I hadn't even thought about writing a review until I noticed Octavian Nothing winning an informal poll of teen services librarians for coolest male name. M.T. Anderson has created a book that is next to impossible to forget, even though sometimes you kinda wish you could.

Octavian has written his autobiography which takes place mostly in the Boston Area, before and during the Revolutionary War. He was raised with his mother (an African princess) in a big estate owned by a "scientific" group called the Novangalian College of Lucidity. Both were educated in literature, science, languages, you name it. At some point though Octavian realizes the other Africans in the household aren't treated as well as he is and it's probably not right that the College weighs his poop. (Seriously, they do that.) To the College's displeasure, he soon discovers the horrible truth behind the poop weighing and some gruesome(though historically accurate) horrors occur. Octavian then sets out to escape with the help of a sympathetic scholar and the start of the Revolutionary War may just help him find a new life.

The second volume, The Kingdom on the Waves, continues his story.

--The Stacked Librarian

Teen Pregnancy

It's one of the most controversial subjects out there. And despite increased media coverage and shows like "Teen Mom," "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," and "Glee," there is often still a reluctance to talk about it.

But talk about it is exactly what these authors have done. I have four books for you: two from the father's perspective, and two from the mother's. (And, before I continue, there are a lot of resources out there for those with questions. You can even start on the library's teen page, right here.)

the first part last by Angela Johnson is told from the perspective of the father. Bobby is an artist, 16, and wants to hang out with his friends and finish high school. But as soon as his baby is born, Bobby has to cope with the reality of being a single dad.

Edgy Reads

I was going to do a best-of-the-year post, but when I looked back at the teen books I read in 2011, I realized that most had something in common: they were pretty dark and disturbing. Dark content in YA literature got a lot of press this year, but in the end, it's a personal decision. If you're searching for books that push the envelope and give you that unsettled, is-this-really-okay-to-read feeling, give these a shot!

• After by Amy Efaw is the raw, unflinching story of the person behind the headlines:  Devon did something terrible, something so bad she can't even quite remember or believe it, even in her cell in juvie, where she has all the time in the world to reflect.

Young Adult to Adult and back again...

I was one of those kids who was always in the wrong section of the library. At eight, you are not supposed to be asking for a book on botany from the adult reference librarian, and at twelve, you get strange looks browsing Stephen King in adult fiction! I guess that is why I find the line between adult and young adult books very fluid--who's to say what appeals to people of any age?

Here are two recent adult books that I recommend for teens; the first is for lovers of suspense and mystery and the second is a most unusual blend of science fiction and fantasy. The Lock Artist, by Steve Hamilton, is the story of Michael, an 18 year old lock-picking whiz kid with a crazy past and a criminally certain future. The chapters alternate between glimpses of a bizarre childhood trauma and his present-day life as an increasingly skilled criminal "boxman", one of many slang terms you learn for a safecracker! Toss in a decent romance and plenty of unforeseen plot turns and you have a great read for any age. Among Others by Jo Walton is the story of Morwenna, a 15 year old lonely, disabled student in an English boarding school (but this is NOT a girl version of HP). Like the first pick, this author weaves together the past and the present, revealing dark memories of Mori's childhood with present day journal entries of great sci-fi and fantasy books that sustain her. Her journey includes new friends and old enemies, but I won't give away the details of the final confrontation with her ambitious, black magic obsessed mother. You will have to go there yourself!

LD

When One Book Isn't Enough

Believe it or not, every single one of the favorite teen books in this year's Summer Reading Program was part of a series. This is a great time to be a fan of YA series -- there are so many excellent ones coming out, and the library has a great selection! So if you're going to be bored over winter break, or forced to head off on a holiday trip, why not grab a series or three to keep you entertained?

If you loved Harry Potter, give Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain a try! Think Harry Potter's life started out rough? Imagine if he'd been a lowly Assistant Pig-Keeper, who got all muddled up in magic, battles, royalty, and epic quests! Start with The Book of Three.