Immortals, steroids and fried chicken...oh, my

Loved the Tamora Pierce Wild Magic. Great title. Follows the Alanna series and tells the story of Daine, who ends up working at the palace. Lots of action and adventure with fighting metal birds who are evil, and lots of magic. Now I know the order of the series. This is why I'm trying to read everything.

Eric Walter's Juice, an Orca book, is a slim volume about the fangers of steroid abuse, but will appeal to the lower level readers who want sports books but have read all the Matt Christopher. Easy to follow, good character development. I liked it a lot.

Not so much Maureen Fergus' Exploits of a Reluctant (but extremely goodlooking) Hero. Have to love the title and the cover (striped, with a chicken bucket), but it did not draw me in at all. The fact that every third paragraph is sectioned off with **** didn't help. Just to make sure it just didn't hit me on a bad day, I gave it to my son, who also was not impressed. We are blaming it on being a Canadian writer. What I learned (Juice was also from Canada)-- instead of 6th grade, they say Grade 6 in Canada. Who knew.