The Sky Village

The Sky Village by Monk Ashland and Nigel Ashland was a book that I really wanted to like. It is a fantasy, but with an Asian setting (as well as one set of characters in Las Vagas), and a fresher, if dystopian, take than slew of the Harry Potter wannabes. This is the start of a series, and will be enjoyed by my fantasy fans, but it sat next to my chair for a month and I just couldn't get into it.

This from the description of the book on the Follett web site, since it's hard to form a coherent overview when it has taken so long to get through something: As animals and machines battle for control on Earth, twelve-year-old Mei is taken into the Sky Village, a web of hot air balloons flying above the ground, where she hopes to be protected from those who hunt her for her unique Kaimira gene, which blends human, animal, and machine traits and makes her a target for all three groups, who want to use her powers for their own good.

From the Files of Madison Finn

This is a generational problem. The book starts out with conversation in a chat room. I can't read this stuff; my reluctant 10 year old loved this book. Since it is part of a 20 book series (check out http://www.hyperionbooksforchildren.com/popular/display.asp?id=12), this is a good thing. Put out by the Volo imprint of Hyperion, this is not a bad buy (mainly in paperback or prebinds) for middle school students. Madison is a tech-savvy Millenial who is struggling with various middle school issues-- her parents are divorced, she is doing community service at a nursing home, she has lots of homework, and she has to deal with a mother who calls her "honey bear" way too often. Realistic, gently humorous, but fraught with prose in a tech format that the children love but I find distracting.

A Greast and Terrible Beauty

I'd read Libba Bray's book a while back but didn't get too far into it. I had it on my list to look at again because of the new popularity of supernatural books for girls. This one starts out well, with Gemma in India, longing to go to England. Her mother is brutaly killed, and Gemma has brushes with forces beyond her understanding, but before we know it she is in a boarding school filled with snotty girls. This part went on and on and was quite boring. The reviews claim that this is fast-paced and thrilling, but I wasn't getting it. I'll hand it to 9th grader if she has time to read, but I don't see this filling the needs of my students. Sigh. Looks so promising, too.

Random titles

Natale Ghent's Piper (2000) is a fine read if you have students who are very interesting in dogs who herd sheep. Wesley saves the runt of a litter and works hard to make Piper into a successful working dog. Wesley has issues in her life-- her father has passed away and she and her mother are living with a relative, she has a crush on a boy whose family also raises dogs, Piper does well in some herding competitions, but becomes badly injured, raising the question as to whether or not the dog will be able to remain. This was a perfectly fine book, but a bit trite in many respects.

Diana Hendry's Harvey Angell and the Ghost Child(1997) is the second in an English series. The first (Harvey Angell) is briefly summarized in the first chapter, so the book stands alone well enough. Hendry portrays a slightly mad English family that takes a trip to the beach and gets involved with a haunted house in a style reminiscent of Roald Dahl or Philip Ardagh. A bit over the top, but oddly engaging.

I did not purchase either of these books-- I am grateful to have them housed in my library but bought for a summer intervention program. Still, some of the choices were a bit odd, and I wish that the purchaser had asked for my opinion. These two I can move; Ginger Pye is a doubtful seller!

Welcome Back!

Back to school and a decent internet connection!

Picked up two books that looked similar and had titles that we much the same. Anne Fine's The Road of Bones is very different from her usual work, which tends to be contemporary and humorous. This work is set in a vague USSR setting about 50 years ago, and concerns a boy who is put to work at a young age, suffers a mishap on the job, and needs to run away. The bleakness of a government that is all too ready to conscript or imprison its citizens is made even sharper when we know that this boy is so young, and has really done nothing to deserve this punishment. While Fine intends this as a political statement, boys who like war or survival stories will enjoy this one.

Loved the cover on Robe of Skulls from French, but found it rather young and much less horrific than I hoped. If the character is evil enough to want a robe of skulls, why is she concerned about earning the money to buy one? Why doesn't she just torture the dressmaker? After that thought, I couldn't buy into the plot. This would be better in elementary schools for die hard fans of Lemony Snicker.

Finally-- Breaking Dawn

Spoiler alert: Don't read past the first paragraph if you don't want to know major plot element.'

I was very apprehensive about this book because of the reactions I heard from others. My daughter wanted to buy multiple copies--- to launch flaming through Meyer's windows! Her best friend thought it read "like bad fan fiction". My principal was concerned about the sex. Other mothers were grossed out by the fact that older adolescent werewolves were "imprinting" (choosing as life-long mates, although their roles are as protectors rather than as paramours) on very tiny girls. Since there are a ton of reviews out there, I will just say this: No worries.

I will go ahead and buy two copies, since the traffic will be constant on this one. I have no worries about the sex; it is hinted at and danced around. My only concern would be that it does romanticize it-- as long as you forget the part about her getting pregnant with an alien (sorry, half-vampire) baby who then tears through her insides at birth.

This was no worse than the others, but would have benefitted from intense editing. Weighing in at 625 pages, this could easily have been tightened up to 400, and the story would have been more intense. Do they battle the Volturi at the end? I was tired at that point and no longer cared.

Marissa Moss

My 5th grader is a big fan of the Amelia books, and Moss has continued these until Amelia is in 7th grade. These have been around for a while, and are sort of proto graphic novels. Not too bad, and I did enjoy the way they were done like notebooks (N.B. Not like a blog, although I have a fear that this is not far off!) with illustrations about all of the things that Amelia does.

Another thing 5th grader liked was the graphic novel version of Ann M. Martin's The Babysitters' Club. I don't think I have any of the original novels, since many were paperbacks and if I had them they ave fallen apart, but the story on the one I read was good and appeals to students in several ways-- the girls are portrayed as responsible, independent, and a central theme is usually misunderstanding between friends and how they mend their differences.

A book that I took out as a treat for myself was Cathy Hopkins' From Geek to Goddess, for the Zodiac Girls series. Hopkins has a great series in Mates, Dates, as well as one for older girls, but I wasn't keen aout this latest one. Gemma goes off to an exclusive boarding school (clearly English, but scrubbed of references so it could have been in the US) where she does not fit in. There are clear overtones that gods and goddesses are running around the place, and she gets picked to have a makeover so that she is more socially successful. The plot was hard to follow, I didn't like the characters, and the mythological link was not sufficient to interest fans of Rick Riordan, etc. It's interesting to see that there is so much interest in mythology now that books that are not particularly well done are being published.

Namioka's Half and Half

Like Hot Sour Salty Sweet, this is a book about one event in a girl's life during which ethnic identity is tested. Like the aforementioned book, even though it's a bit odd, it works.

Fiona Cheng has a Chinese father and a Scottish mother. She looks more Chinese; her brother looks more Scottish. How does she identify herself on forms? And more importantly, how can she understand both sides of her ethnic heritage and make all of her relatives happy?

Set against a multicultural festival, Fiona must choose between helping out her father when he is presenting a new book, and her Scottish grandfather, who needs another dancer. Both events are conveniently (for the plot) scheduled at the same time, and Fiona must come up with a clever solution to make everyone happy.

This is a short book, but I did enjoy it. Since middle school is so much about identity, many students will like this, even if their ethnicity does not exactly coincide with Fiona's.

Have a new shipment of hi/lo readers in. On the plus side, Geoff Edgers' Who Was Elvis Presley and Who Were the Beatles were nice, succinct introductions to these influential musicians. Actual pictures would have been a nice addition, but students who do not know much about these artists might be inclined to learn more after reading these quick picks.

On the horrifying side, volume 2 of R. L. Stine's Goosbumps "Graphix" tales was included. I did not pick this out. There will be lots of traffic on this one, but it's .... everything that is morally repugnant to most librarians. Tacky, ill-done, stupid....I will let it stay as a testament to the fact that I will allow graphic novels in my library, although I usually go for ones that are MUCH better quality than this.

Eclipse (but not Breaking Dawn...yet!)

May I just say that Ms. Meyer is a lovely person who personally responded to some of my students a few years ago when they wanted to interview her. I wish her luck. Her books are popular. There are worse things.

There are also better. Twilight was okay, New Moon was okay but Eclipse really, really irked me. From a literary point of view, I think that all of the books could have been more effectively edited. They all seem to ramble, there are many phrases that are not quite properly turned, and if the books were shorter, I think they would be more coherent. Redundancies bog down the story. We know that Edward is very cold and Jacob is very hot. We know that Bella is conflicted. Please don't tell us again. Introduce some new conflict that isn't creepy, like a young adult werewolf "imprinting" on a two-year-old. Ewwww.

As an independent woman, I found this book irritating. Bella doesn't want to be the sort of girl who gets married right out of high school. But she will be because she looooooves him so much that she can't live without him. She wants to be "closer" to him, but he is traditional and wants to wait until they're married. Fine. But being married to a vampire gives a whole new meaning to "forever". Bella is young. She would rather get married, become a vampire, and follow Edward's family around than go to college, experience the world and, perhaps, outgrow Edward.

While this was an interesting springboard for conversation between my 9th grade daughter and myself, as an undiscussed message, it's alarming. Young girls already get obsessed with boys, and this book seems to be telling them that it's okay.

I'm borrowing Breaking Dawn as soon as possible, but an ardent fan described it as "bad fan fic". I don't have high hopes, but as much as I would like to see Ms. Meyer do well, I would not feel bad if girls get fed up with Bella's sniveling story of conflicted love.

Betsy's Busy Summer

Oddly enough, Carolyn Haywood did not include in Betsy's summer a trip to the St. Louis zoo when the heat index was 110 degrees. I, however, had that pleasure, but survived and am now back.

After years of pestering my youngest to read B is for Betsy, the first chapter book I checked out of my school library in the first grade, she got desperate enough to read it, and, predictably, LOVED it. This necessitated a trip to the library to stock up, since I long ago gave away the rest of the Heywood.

I read Betsy's Busy Summer, and must say that for a series that started in 1939, it has weathered very well. Children falling in fish ponds and trying to rig watermelon seed contests are still gently amusing. There was a description of the "parcel post wagon" arriving, and it was pulled by a horse. This seemed odd, as I suppose sending 8 year olds to the grocery to get a list of items might be, but all in all, it was enjoyable.

While Haywood is predominantly an author for elementary school students, struggling middle school readers will probably still enjoy the short chapters and easy to understand circumstances. Many of the books to not specifically mention the age that Betsy is.

For more on the author, consult the nice biography on this site:
http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/bios/Haywood__Carolyn.html

Let's Travel Abroad!

Oddly, both of these titles are the second in a series, so I will have to hunt down the first, but I did enjoy Sabine Durrant's Bon Voyage, Connie Pickles and Piper Banks' Geek Abroad. In the first, an English girl goes to France on a home stay visit and tries to track down her estranged grandparents. Pleasant and amusing. In Banks' offering, an American math whiz goes to London to visit her author mother, meets hot English boy, and then returns to the states. Best travel book EVER remains Maureen Johnson's 13 Little Blue Envelopes, and Rachel Hawthorne's trilogy-in-one-volume A Year Abroad has lots of travel details. These, along with the Students Across the Seven Seas books, have been very popular with my girls, so I will definitely purchase these.

R. L. Stine and other titles

Note: New R.L. Stine books are much nicer to read than yellowed, falling apart books. Not that this makes a real difference in circulation, but if you have very popular titles in your library, some might need to be replaced.

That said, the newest series, Fear Street Nights, is really quite horrible. Premise: High school seniors sneak out of their homes and run about Fear Street at night, takes artifacts from the ramshackle Fear mansion before it is torn down. Of course, these items are directly connected to Angelica Fear, about whom I last read in the Cheerleaders series. And here she is, back again, possessing teenagers so that she can kill those who stole from her in horrible ways, many involving cockroaches coming out of their mouths or blood spurting from their ears.

The teens manage to swill some beer, bully classmates, and engage in other unattractive and undesirable behaviours. After a while, I started to hope that the green gaseous cloud of Angelica Fear will just descend on the barkeep at the bar built on top of the mansion site. And really, with that sort of mortality rate, wouldn't people start to move away from the area? The titles are Moonlight Secrets, Midnight Game, and Darkest Dawn.

That said, I didn't mind The Rich Girl, which had a somewhat moral tone-- if you steal money that doesn't belong to you, the guilt might drive you mad before your friends gaslight you into believing you have killed one of them. Had its moments. There is a new copy available. The Perfect Date also was pretty good, and students who don't immediately understand that Rosha Nelson is really Sharon Noles will learn a little about anagrams at the end.

Denise Vega's Fact of Life #31 had way too much about midwifery and child birth for it to be all that interesting to middle schoolers, so I'll pass on that. L'Engle's posthumous publication of her 1940s novel, The Joys of Love also lacks appeal for this age. I would get that only for hard core L'Engle fans. Dobkin's Neptune's Children started out okay (freak plague kills all the adults, stranding a bunch of children in an amusement park), but I couldn't get into it. I'll recommend O.T.Nelson's The Girl Who Owned the City for students seeking postapocalyptic tales. Gloria Whelan's Parade of Shadows was a historical novel that addressed an odd time and place, and those move slowly in my library.

New titles from Rachel Vail and Caroline Meyer

I'll blame the heat and humidity on my opinion of these, since I will go ahead and buy them.

Vail's Lucky was a little too much like the Lisi Harrison Clique books for my taste. Girl lives in upscale community with all the amenities, and her friends are throwing a huge 8th grade graduation party. (For one, NEVER heard of such a thing, especially on the scale described. But this is Ohio.) Girl's mother loses job, and family has to cut back, including the party.

I usually can count on Vail to take a pink book and give it resonance, but I could not get into this one. Her big problem is a dress for the party? Hmmm. Did very much enjoy the fact that the mother was the high powered earner and the father was a school teacher. Still, didn't much like the main character.

Meyer's In Mozart's Shadow (Probably got that wrong-- high schooler has it in her room and I refuse to enter!) was interesting-- it follows the path of Mozart's sister, and covers her travails at not being given as many opportunities because she is a girl, and not quite as talented. The period costumes, mores, and prejudices are all well-portrayed, but the adventures of the Family Mozart all got to be a bit samey after a while. I'm sure this is an accurate portrayal, but some of the other Meyer titles are a little more exciting.

Have a Connie Pickles book to read now, and it looks quite fun. It's the sequel, but it's a British book. Don't know how I missed the first one.

Sic Transit Rosemary Sutcliff (again?)

7/21/2008--Thanks to Charlotte, who commented on which of the Sutcliffe are better. When I get back to the library, I will have to check. I'm glad I wasn't alone in disliking Frontier Wolf!

Even though I was stranded in an orthopedist's office for an hour and a half with ONLY Sutcliff's Frontier Wolf between me and being so bored that would start making sculptures out of the cotton balls and tongue depressors, it was still excruciatingly hard to slog through. I read the whole thing with close concentration, and I still can't really tell you what it's about. Oh, sorta Roman Alexios does something bad and gets sent to a fort at the edges of the Empire dealing with various British natives while running the Frontier Wolves who are keeping the peace in the area. Peace is hard to keep. Various people keep stealing horses and shooting arrows at them, and then the Frontier Wolves have to slog through the mud. There are battles, and a lot of people get killed, and then they deal with some more tribes.

Is it any wonder that even though two copies of this book has been in the library since 1980, this one has only been checked out once? To a really heavy-duty reader on my recommendation? And he wasn't wild about it? In theory, these books should go out well, because they are about a time period the students enjoy, and about wars, but the details are so ponderous that the stories are tough going.

I'm going to start weeding them. I'll plow through them first, but unless something really strikes me as marvelous, they are moving on to better homes.

Mary Stewart's A Walk in Wolf Wood was somewhat similar, but with more magic thrown in, and somehow much better. From the same time (1980), this read more like a much older book because of the suspension of disbelief the reader is asked to take. John and Margaret are on a picnic with their parents when they see a man in medeival dress going through the forest. They follow him, only to end up back in time, and being the only people who can save the man from an evil sorcerer who has turned him into a werwolf and impersonated him back at the castle so he can kill the king.

This was charming instead of onerous. Fans of Dealing with Dragons and maybe Tamora Pierce would like this one. I will have to look up this author's Arthurian Saga, which I am surprised to say is not in my library!

Eleanora Tate's The Secret of Gumbo Grove was a fine mystery, but the very, very Southern quality of it irked me. Mystyer fans who don't mind that will enjoy the story of Raisin, who helps an elderly neighbor clean up an old cemetary and in doing so, finds out many scandals and stories of the past. When one of these stories might help save the cemetary from destruction, Raisin and her friends do some research and find out that sometimes people don't want the past to be known.

Obviously taking a breather from the Stine.

Paula Yoo's Good Enough.

Good Enough was quite good! Patti is finishing up her senior year in high school, and her parents have put a lot of pressure on her. Get the concert master position in the All-State orchestra, do really well on the SAT, get into Harvardyaleprinceton, be charming at church, help around the house. Patti has done all of these things for years, and comes to realize that while this makes her parents happy, it isn't doing a whole lot for her.

She meets Ben, otherwise known as Hot Trumpet Guy. She is so enthralled that she muffs her orchestra audition and ends up as assistant concert master. Parents are not pleased. She becomes friends with Ben, and sneaks off to play music with him. Again, parents are not pleased. She eventually does better at the SAT and looks to have the college application thing in hand, but will following her parents' choices of Ivy League schools make her happy? She applies to Juilliard without their knowledge and starts to think about what it is that SHE wants to do with her life.

The descriptions of Patti's interactions with Ben are wonderful and painful at the same time. She can hardly breathe in his presence, and yet knows that while he is being nice to her, he's going to keep dating the cute cheerleader types. The whole relationship is realistically played; they become friends again after Patti tells Ben she likes him, but not for a long time, and not forever. He moves on through her life, and that is the way relationships often evolve.

A big part of this book is the fact that Patti and her parents are Korean. This is evidenced throughout the book (who knew that Koreans were so fond of Spam?), and yet wasn't the driving force behind the book. I wanted to be friends with Patti-- I think we would have gotten along. I was never as smart or as musically talented, but I had many of the same frustrations and delusions. I was glad that things worked out in the end, especially when I read the back flap and suspected that this is a somewhat autobiographical tale.

I can buy this and pass it off as Pink, even though I will be buying it because it's a dead on description of how high school can be, and because I was glad to live through it with Patti.

Slow Internet, More Stine

Feel I should explain the poor quality of summer blogging. When I use the computer at home, I have incredibly slow internet (so High Schooler can't use MySpace-- it works quite well. She gets frustrated and gives up!), PLUS children who like to look over my shoulder. Stick with me, and things WILL improve in the fall.

Finished McNab's Meltdown (as well as the back of a cable knit sweater). I am looking forward to seeing if Danny gets books on his own, now that his grandfather, Fergus is out of the picture due to injuries. A great four book series.

Stine round up:
First Date: The stalker you suspect is never the stalker you should fear. Chelsea is shy and dateless until two boys appear in her life-- Sparks, who seems dangerous and impulsive, and Will, who is a nice boy from her school. When her life takes a frightening turn, Chelsea's instincts don't serve her well.

The Girlfriend: If your girlfriend goes out of town, don't date other girls, especially ones you find on the side of the road. Scotty makes this mistake and ends up with psychopathic girl who offs TWO pets. I find this a particularly disturbing facet of Stine's work, and of all the warped and bloody things in Stine's books, puts me off more than any of them. After all of the stalking and beating, things work out for Scotty when he comes clean to first girlfriend. There are local interests in this book-- Westerville is mentioned, and the school Scotty attends is in a neighboring town. (Stine is from Ohio and went to OSU.)

Killer's Kiss: Nice twist at the end, but in order to get to it, you had to read about Delia putting on her purple lipstick too many times. Delia and Karina compete for everything, especially Vincent. Bad things happen to everyone-- I really thought it was Delia's sister, so fooled me.

Next to read: Alfred Kropp, if I can find the copy in my son's messy room.

Reviewer X

Hey, I'm all for shameless self-promotion. The unusually astute Review X has posted a blogger profile of me on her site. She does great reviews, too, usually of slightly older stuff than I cover. Check it out! She has contests, too!
http://reviewerx.blogspot.com/

Scheduling Reading Time

Having trouble getting your children to read over the summer? Finding that you aren't getting any reading done over break either? It has come to light in our household that a lack of schedule, although a wonderful thing, is making it difficult to get books read even though there is more time to do so. During the year, we are all pretty much quiet, curled up and reading by 7 or 8 p.m. Now, I have books scattered all over the house and get distracted by the nine baby quilts I want to get finished today, or the back of my cable knit sweater. Or I need to walk the dog or dust the baseboards. High Schooler has not started reading Winterdance or Spite Fences for honors English, so I am not going to blame R.L. Stine for my lack of reading. We will blame lack of scheduling, and put procedures in place to remedy this!

That said, McNab's Payback, Avenger and Meltdown are still going slowly. They are very, with lots of action and more importantly, lots of intricate detail about international espionage, but since the covers are all very similar and I have them all over the house, I keep picking up the same one I've just finished.

If you have a fan of spy novels, these are great. There are a few bad words, but the books are so good that I have been turning a blind eye to them. This is one of the few times I've done this.

At 8:00 p.m., I have an appointment with.... The Girlfriend, First Date and Killer's Kiss. What fun!

Beneath My Mother's Feet

Amjed Qamar's first novel, set in Pakistan, is something that every malcontented 14-year-old U.S. girl needs to read. Not only is it an interesting depiction of daily life that is much different from the one we know, it is a wonderful example of the things that adolescents in the U.S. take for granted. Don't have a cell phone? Be grateful that you are allowed to go to school.

Nazia is not so lucky. Her father, a construction worker, is injured in an accident and becomes ill-inclined to work, even after he recovers. Her older brother, Bilal, does not contribute to the family income and breaks into the home to steal Nazia's dowry. Without the dowry, her arranged marriage to a cousin is called off. Her mother pulls her out of school so that she can help watch her brother and sister while the mother cleans houses. The family situation worsens, and soon the family is living in an unused outbuilding at one of the homes that they clean.

This is a great book to give to students who like problem novel. Like Iqbal, this story brings another part of the world to life. I hope to see more from this author, who works in a nearby school system. Since it is so hard to get young adult books from other parts of the world, this is the next best thing.

In the same vein, I had great hopes for Zenati's A Bottle in the Gaza Sea, about an Israeli girl who gets to know a Palestinian boy via e mail. It didn't hit me quite right-- Nye's Habibi gave a much clearer picture of that part of the world.

Also working through the rest of the Andy McNab books still. Started to knit and do quilts, which is cutting into my reading time a lot!

Suddenly Supernatural by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel

Well, reluctant ten year old refused to read this, but I thought it was great fun. The best part was the characters-- Kat, Jac and Kat's mother were all people I would like to meet. The evil school mates were over the top in the way that most 8th graders really are, but even they had a human side. Especially appreciated-- Kat's mother is a medium, and a bit of a "hippie", but instead of just assuming that all parents are hippies, Kimmel describes the mother most delightfully.

Since Kat has to deal with "dead people" showing up at her house, she hasn't made a lot of friends until cello-toting Jac shows up. Right about this time, though, Kat starts seeing dead people, too, including a flute player who shows up in her school library. There is a mystery that must be solved, and some personal problems to be worked out, but it was a great book. I am still hoping to get Ms. Reluctant to read it. The words are nicely spaced on the page, and the book is blissfully easy to read.

Unlike R.L. Stine's...
Beware: R.L. Stine Picks His Favorite Scary Stories. Stine is a much better writer than I am, but he is not a better writer than Ray Bradbury, and Stine's work suffers being placed next to Bradbury's. The stories by other authors are very good.

The Dare. Was three chapters in before I realized I'd read this already.

The Dead Girlfriend. A decent whodunit with lots of false clues, as well as lots of violence. Who really is responsible for the death of Jonathan's old girlfriend? And will his new girlfriend suffer the same fate?

The Face. Repressed memories of trauma are a big theme in Stine's work, and this time a girl keeps drawing a boy's face and doesn't know why. How did this boy die, and what part did she play in it? There are some twists. Remember, check ski slopes for razor wire before heading down.

Goodnight Kiss. Summer time, seaside Vampire romance. Lots of people meet bad ends. Why is it easier when people meet bad ends? They usually do something to contribute to it. I'm still disturbed every time a pet wanders onto the pages of a Stine book. They usually meet gruesome and worrisome ends. In this one, though, it's vampires romping about, flying as bats and biting people's velvety necks.

Halloween Party. If you are invited to a party at a haunted house, don't go wandering around on your own. Again, people fake their own deaths for laughs and then end up dead, a character is exacting revenge for 30-year-old wrongs, and in the end, the evil person gets it. This is like a slasher film put on paper. On the upside, no pets are harmed.

Hit and Run. Okay, really, do people running morgues really let their friends borrow corpses for practical jokes? I don't think so. If I have learned nothing else from Stine, it's that I shouldn't take a dead body and stage an accident to get back at my friends, then stalk them and try to murder them all. Seemed silly to me, but I can see why students might find it intriguing.

Dangerous Girls and A Taste of Night. I had great hopes for these, since they were published in hard back, but they were more bat flying, wooden stake to the heart vampire books. Somewhat intriguing that one twin wanted to be a vampire and the other didn't, that the mother was bitten and then killed herself after turning her best friend into one of the undead, and that the father was now a vampire hunter, but I have little patience for vampire books that don't have some element of originality to the vampire myth, and these didn't. Plus, I felt really bad for the little brother, who was exhibiting a lot of signs of deep disturbance due to all of the deaths around him, but it wasn't a big part of the plot to get him help.

It has actually been very helpful to read these, if only so that when a student checks one out, I have some idea of what is being ingested. I did have to take a break and am working on the Andy McNab series, since the 4th one, Meltdown, has just come out.