New: Library Guild Book Reviews!
The members of our Library Guild are great readers, and now we will be posting their reviews of new fiction, non-fiction and biography, as well as some old favorites. Check back often for the latest in good reading!
Review scale, from highest to lowest rating:
A Must Read
Highly Recommended
Recommended
A Pretty Good Read
Nothing Special
The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell YA FIC BUSHNELL
The Carrie Diaries has the best last line of any book I've read this year...but don't you dare read it first! You should take the time to get to know the young woman who grows up to be Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City, the book that became a TV series that became two feature films and that introduced even the most fashion-impaired among us to Manolo Blahniks.
In this young adult novel, Carrie is a senior in high school. (Maybe in Connecticut? It's never quite clear, but it's clear that where she really wants to be is in New York City.) At the start of the school year, everyone is riveted by the arrival of a mysterious new student, Sebastian Kydd. Although Carrie has plenty of other things on her mind--her application to a writing program at the New School in New York and to Brown University, trouble between two of her best friends who are also boyfriend and girlfriend, a little sister who is acting out in increasingly dangerous ways, and the usual sturm und drang of high school life, particularly her persecution at the hands of a clique boss named Donna LaDonna--she is irresistibly drawn to and preoccupied with Sebastian. Anyone familiar with the TV series might recognize an early prototype of Mr. Big in Sebastian; he is dashing and attractive, but a slippery commitment-phobe as well. The book would make a good book club selection for teens for that reason; while I was reading, I wanted badly to be able to discuss Sebastian and his treatment of Carrie with some other girls!
Just as interesting, though, are Carrie's other friends, a close-knit group of boys and girls who are all struggling through their own dramas. Parents might be warned that there is a fair amount of smoking and drinking and drugs here, and sex too, although not explicitly portrayed. There are also some jarring disconnects between this book and the TV series, the most striking of which is that in the book, Carrie's mother is dead and the father is a loving presence, while in the TV series, Carrie's father abandons the family when she is only five years old. But it all seems quite real and compelling, and while the story seems to start slowly, by the end I couldn't put this down. And as I mention, there is that great last line...
Sample lines: Boyfriends. I've had two major ones: Sam, who was a stoner, and Doug, who was on the basketball team. Of the two I liked Sam better. I might have even loved him, but I knew it couldn't last. Sam was beautiful but dumb. He took woodworking classes, which I had no idea existed until he gave me a wooden box he'd made for Valentine's Day. Despite his lack of intelligence--or perhaps, more disturbingly, because of it--when I was around him I found him so attractive I thought my head would explode.
Recommended for: grades 9 and up.
Review by Dr. Maura Mandyck.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer B KAMKWAMB
William Kamkwamba grows up in a village in rural Malawi where people still believe in the power of magic and access to learning is very limited. William’s father is a farmer, entirely dependent on the seasonal rains to grow the crops to feed his family. When a devastating drought and famine strike Malawi in 2002, the crops fail and the family barely scrapes together enough food to survive until the next planting season, getting by on one meal a day of corn husks and pumpkin leaves. There is no money to send William to school, and he must drop out. To fill his time William begins frequenting a nearby library, really just a few shelves of random books donated from other countries. One of the books he finds there, however, changes William’s life. The book Using Energy sparks William’s mind and excites his imagination about the amazing world of electricity. He uses this knowledge to plan a windmill to generate electricity for his home which is only lit by kerosene lanterns, and to pump water from a well to irrigate his father’s fields so the family will not have to face the prospect of a killing famine ever again. Having no money and few resources, William scrounges parts for his windmill from rusted bicycles, broken tractors, and other abandoned machinery he finds in and around his village. He has very few tools and must improvise every step of the way. The villagers mock William, but he pays them no mind as his windmill project comes together and slowly climbs towards the sky. This inspiring true story left me marveling about what may be accomplished through little more than determination, inventiveness, and a hard-working, curious mind.
Sample Lines: “On the weekends, I walked the old city and learned about its buildings, many of them built by hand more than four hundred years ago without the kind of modern technology we have today. Seeing this, it gave me even more confidence that we Africans can develop our continent if we just put our minds and abundant resources together and stop waiting on others to do it for us.”
Highly Recommended for: 5th grade through adult.
Review by Mr. D. Scott Foshee
Stitches: A Memoir by David Small GN B SMALL
The form of a Graphic Novel can be used to transcend mere narrative, and author David Small uses his considerable talents to full effect in Stitches. Stitches tells the story of Small's 1960's Detroit childhood, which was full of brooding, very dark family secrets.
Small's father is a prominent radiologist and his mother is a housewife prone to prolonged silent rages. Family issues are rarely spoken of at all. We finally learn the source of some of his mother's problems when the author accompanies her to visit his grandmother in Indiana. Small gradually comes to realize his grandmother's brutally dangerous insanity bubbling right under the surface, and when he confronts his mother about it he is told in no uncertain terms never to mention it again.
When a neighbor points out a lump on Small's neck, his mother takes him to the hospital where his father x-rays him. The lump is deemed a sebaceous cyst, and his parents wait three and a half years to have it removed, all the while buying new cars, furniture, and other status symbols for themselves to improve their social status. When the lump is finally removed, along with half of Small's vocal chords, his parents do not tell him the true nature of the surgery. Small must discover the truth for himself, but only learns the full shocking story from his father years later.
Stitches finely shades issues including family secrets, mental illness, parental neglect, and coming of age in the world. David Small's illustrations perfectly convey this grim world and the hope and promise that still grow in such dark places.
Sample Lines: The book itself is almost wordless, so here is the author's comment on the power of graphic novels: "I like to say that images get straight inside us, bypassing all the guard towers. You often go to the movies and see people with tears streaming down their cheeks, but you don't see this in libraries, not in my experience at least."
Highly Recommended for: ages 12 and up.
Review by Mr. D. Scott Foshee
I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President by Josh Lieb JUV FIC LIEB
Josh Lieb is an executive producer of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and has also worked on "The Simpsons," and so it's no surprise that the humor in this book for young readers is a bit edgy. The protagonist Oliver Watson is a chubby, unpopular seventh grader--or so his classmates think. In "reality" (reality is a bit slippery here), he is an evil genius and criminal mastermind who commands an invisible army of all-powerful minions and uses Lionel Sheldrake, Third Richest Man in the World, whenever he needs a grownup to act as his public face. The plot is ostensibly about the election of the seventh grade class president. The real story, though, is Oliver's desire for more attention from his father and his crush on Tatiana Lopez, Meanest Girl in the School. Oliver is never a very likable character, but the world of his imagination is funny and fascinating, and an enjoyable place to spend some time. Lieb has sold the movie rights to Warner Brothers, so maybe this evil genius will be coming to a theater near you.
Sample lines: I head for the center locker and give its lock a few quick twists. The locker swings open, as do both of the lockers next to it--they're really just one big door. I slip inside and pull it shut behind me. I'm greeted by an elderly English butler. "Good afternoon, sir."
Recommended for: 5th - 9th grades, adults with a tolerance for fart and booger jokes.
Review by Dr. Maura Mandyck.
My One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath JUV FIC HORVATH
The first chapter of this wonderful book is a bit misleading, beginning as it does with a slow, lyrical description of summers past. The writing is beautiful in that first chapter, but as I say, slow, and I wasn't so sure that I wanted to read a whole book about "long, nurturing days, watching the geese and the saltwater swans and the tides," zzzzz...... But things pick up dramatically in the second chapter and gallop through to the end, and include not quite one hundred adventures, but plenty to sustain your attention, touch your heart and make you laugh out loud. The main character is Jane, the eldest of four children who live with their mother in a house by the sea, and the story really begins when Jane is drafted into delivering Bibles with the local church pastor whose name is Nellie Phipps and who has an unchurchly fascination with faith healing, fortune telling and traveling (or rather, failing to travel) by time portal. When Jane drops a Bible from a hot air balloon (I told you things picked up) onto the head of the youngest child of the awful Gourd family, she is further conscripted into babysitting all the little Gourds all summer, while her mother's gentlemen callers come and go, Mrs. Parks and Mrs. Nasters compete over who is the sickest, Jane's friend Ginny plots her future career as dress designer, and a dog named Horace is rescued from the sea. Horvath is the author of many other books (soon to be available in the Athens Academy library), so you can begin with this absolutely delightful book and look forward to more.
Sample lines: I am sorry to say that by noon, after countless trips to the public washroom with all five Gourds because I don't dare leave any of them on the beach, these little excursions being the height of excitement after long minutes of watching sand blow across the horizon and watching the Gourds who are getting restless slap each other with whatever is handy...it is then that I decide I will take the Gourds on a long trek. It will be like the Long March. History always seems to be full of downtrodden people being forced to march great distances for other people's convenience and if it works for those dictators it should work for me.
A Must Read for: 5th grade and up, and would make a terrific read-aloud for younger children or families.
Review by Dr. Maura Mandyck.
