

Vivian Vande Velde's Stolen has a promisingly creepy cover, and I am always looking for horror books, but it wasn't quite what my students are requesting. It has a quasi-medieval setting, which I have learned in the past few weeks is NOT popular among most readers (A teacher assigned a very nice project using fiction to learn about this time period. Then we realized that everything we had was vastly long, and the students are not happy. They even think Avi's Crispin is dull.) In short, Isabelle is found wandering in the woods, not able to remember anything. It is believed that she is a child stolen by a witch. Had its moments, but I'm going to pass.
Lauren Henderson's Kiss Me, Kill Me also had too many elements I don't like, even though it was well written and had some good twists. I'm just burned out on books set in exclusive private schools. Scarlett, a gymnast, struggles to fit into her school, and when she kisses the popular Dan at a party and he dies of an allergic reaction, she is traumatized and has to change schools. She begins to realize that Dan's death was not an accident, and starts her own investigation into the events. Too serious for a pink book, not mysterious for a mystery. Just not what I was looking for.
When I realized that the copy of Justin Richard's The Parliament of Blood was the British version (never said Baker and Taylor's web site was user friendly, but their prices are good), I wondered what the other versions looked like-- from left: UK hard cover, UK paperback, and US hard back. Think the US version is most attractive.
Liz, George and Eddie are back after their adventures in The Death Collector. After a mummy unwrapping at the British museum ends in a farce (the mummy staggers off into a waiting taxi, which all figure is an elaborate joke), George, curator of uncatalogued items, gets an invitation to join the Damnation Club and uncovers all manner of evil plots. Liz is on stage, and happy until her father passes away-- only to come back as one of the undead. Eddie is not happy with life off the streets because school is unpleasant, so he's glad to have some intrigue to occupy him.
It turns out that the mummy was Orabis, Lord of the Dead, and the savior that slumbering vampires all over London have been waiting for. He needs blood, so Victorian London is starting to see bloodless corpses littered about. Orabis' henchmen are well placed in government, so there's no contacting the police to help when things go wrong. There's a lot of action in this book, lots of teeth sinking into necks, but it's not overly gruesome. The plot has engaging twists: George ends up saving the day with a bit of engineering.
I'm not doing well outlining the plot because I'm preoccupied with testing tape recorders today, but I will say this: I started this book yesterday morning, and at several times during the day I thought "Ooh! This is waiting for me at the end of the day!" Thought about not finishing it this morning because I overslept a bit, but had to find out how it ends. And I don't like vampire books, remember. This one could almost stand alone, but reading The Death Collector would help a lot. Definitely buy both, because they will circulate well. My only complaint-- the cover should have matched the first book better. I would have gone with a textured mummy to match the textured dinosaur on the first book.
Another author who does not get the treatment she deserves is Elizabeth Cody Kimmel. I thought her Lily B. series was brilliant, and yet her publisher religated her to Scholastic paperbacks and stopped her after three books. Her Suddenly Supernatural series is in the same paper over boards binding that The Demigod Files is, and these covers last about two weeks in backpacks and lockers before they look chewed on. Scaredy Kat, the sequel to School Spirit, continues the story of a girl who finds she has the same ability to communicate with spirits that her mother does. This time, she is involved with a spirit in the house next door, who turns out not to be dead, but just in a coma. The brilliant thing about Kimmel is her characters and families. Things are a little rocky at Kat's house, but the relationships are portrayed as warm and supportive. I am really excited about Unhappy Medium, which comes out this April.
Loved Kathleen Krull's biography of Marie Curie, so picked up her L. Frank Baum biography, but it's a picture book. Interesting enough, but much too young for my students. That, and I just weeded biographies and may never purchase another one. I think I had every single biography that was here when the building opened in 1969. No one seems to do biography projects any more, and as much as I love biographies and try to push them, the students just do not check them out.
It's on to the Final Frontier of Cleaning-- the cabinets in the back room. Whee!
Mary Hoffman's The Color of Home is a picture book. Hassan starts school in the US and does fairly well despite his limited language skills. However, when the class does paintings, Hassan starts off with a pleasant home scene but then adds flames to the house and shows his uncle's death. An interpreter is brought in, and Hassan's past is discussed. He then paints a new picture for his mother, takes it home, and starts to see that his new home is not as gray as it had seemed. I'm not sure that this is quite right for the middle school, but was a very interesting book. I did not realize that Hoffman also wrote Stravaganza: City of Stars. (City of Secrets, book 4, is out now.)
I love how Tina Ferraro mixes fun books with problems. Her How to Hook a Hottie and Top Ten Uses for an Unworn Prom Dress are already in tatters in my library even though they are fairly new! This one is every bit as good. Parker is mad because she didn't make the varsity soccer team. Her friends don't want to hang out without her because of this. She and her brother come up with an improbable master plan-- at the annual kissing booth run by the varsity members, his friend will demand to kiss Parker for $300. She will then HAVE to be put on varsity. The friend demands that the kiss be a good one, so Parker gets involved with a neighbor boy just for "kissing lessons". Since he's two grades behind her, this leads to some problems. There's a lot of mean girl issues, drama with the neighbors, and an authentic teen voice. I could see the holes in Parker's plan, but I don't think she could. There's a lot of kissing in this one, all very clean, but I love the fact that Tristan is a year younger and Parker still is enthralled with him. Very few books cover this topic. Very, very fun!
Personal preference comes into playin this review, so I apologize. Even though I understand baseball more than football, I find baseball books extremely tedious, especially when as in the first two titles, Preller's Six Innings in the Game of Life and Jennings' Out Standing in My Field, they include rosters, scores, and diagrams. This, of course, is just what the boys who will read nothing but baseball books want.
Of course, you can't have a novel without a problem. Baseball likes to throw in players with cancer (Preller) or overbearing fathers (Jennings). I must say that I greatly enjoyed the biography of Jennings-- maybe he'll write a more general humor book! Zinnen's Holding at Third has a brother battling cancer. All are good and will circulate well. Just not my "cup of pink tea".
The stand out was Sharon Robinson's Safe at Home. Elijah, whose father has died, has to move to Harlem from Connecticut, and play baseball instead of basketball. Robinson (the daughter of Jackie) has worked with a lot of children and knows her baseball. Slam Dunk is the sequel to this one.
The sequels are Dead is a State of Mind, (From Follett: When a gorgeous new student's prediction that a teacher will be murdered comes true, seventeen-year-old Daisy is determined to solve the crime, but when all signs point to the killer being a werewolf, she fears she is in over her head.) and Dead is So Last Year (Again, Follett: In the beach town of Nightshade, California, home to both human and supernatural beings, the Giordano sisters find summer employment and uncover mysteries involving doppelgangers and oversized football players. ) They are available in prebinds. Should have ordered two of each!For the boys, it's Kevin Emerson's Oliver Nocture series. In The Vampire's Photograph, Oliver realizes that someone has broken into the decrepit house above his family's basement lair, and is trying to take pictures of him. He doesn't mind all that much-- he's always felt at odds with his family and a little, well, queasy about the whole vampire thing. And for good reason. It turns out that he's part human, and his involvement with humans leads him into some dangerous situations. The details about Oliver's vampire world are fresh and fun (young vampire's need a lot of sugar!), and this is perfect for the boys who feel like they need to read Twilight but don't really like it. More serious than Brewer's Vladimir Tod and not as violent as Shan, this is a great series for middle school boys. Again, available in prebinds and should have bought two of each.
The series:
#2: The Sunlight Slayings
#3: Blood Ties
#4: The Demon Hunter
#5: Eternal Tomb, coming April 1, 2009
I will not even blame Mr. Horowitz for the Latin error on page 10, since it seems to be a typographical error. "Quid te exempts iuvat spinis de pluribus una?" should really be "Quid te exempta juvat spinis e pluribus una?" ("Better one thorn plucked than all remain"). I'm sure this bothered all of you as much as it bothered me.
Nota Bene
: T.H. White's Latin in The Once and Future King (1939) is flawless as far as I can tell. Sic transit gloria mundi.