Destroy All Cars by Blake Nelson (High school) Date Read: June 6th (out of 5 possible ivy leaves) This book must be good. Otherwise there's no way it would have held my attention such that I kept coming back to it in the midst of what I'm dubbing Hell Week '09. ('Nuff said about *that* thank you very much.) Why it worked: it's funny, straightforward, and the chapters are mercifully short. Fans of The Gospel According to Larry ought to find plenty to commiserate with in James Hoff.
	Crossing Stones by Helen Frost (Middle school) Date Read: June 7th Eighteen-year-old Muriel Jorgensen lives on one side of Crabapple Creek. Her family's closest friends, the Normans, live on the other. For as long as Muriel can remember, the families' lives have been intertwined, connected by the crossing stones that span the water... So there I am, enjoying a sensitive multi-voice story in verse set in Michigan during World War One. A taste of the women's suffrage movement here, a dash of Spanish Influenza there -- just the kind of historical novel I like. Helen Frost's walloped me with her poetic prowess twice before, but this time I'm grooving on the story, thinking I've got her bag of tricks all figured out. You see, some of the chapter-poems in Crossing Stones are laid out in a zig-zaggy creek-like pattern, while others are shaped like stones. Nifty visual metaphor going on there, right? And then I read the Notes on the Form at the end and by God if Helen hasn't done it to me all over again. Remember The Braid? Turns out there's a similar heap of stealth poetry going on right in front of my nose in Crossing Stones: those rounded poems scattered among the free verse zig-zags are in fact "cupped-hand sonnets" with fourteen lines apiece and perfectly steadfast rhyme schemes. As if that's not enough, shared rhymes from those individual poems interlace one sonnet with the next in a way I am far too lazy to describe. Besides, part of me thinks I shouldn't even be crowing about all these wonderments, seeing as so much of the wonder comes from the fact that none of Helen's structural acrobatics interferes in the least with the story itself. She's subtle, that Helen Frost. And crazy-brilliant. Seriously, who else even thinks of this kind of thing, much less pulls it off? (Available in September)
	Kaleidoscope Eyes by Jen Bryant (4th grade and up) Date Read: June 8th An honest-to-God search for pirate treasure -- is there any better premise for a middle grade summer read? Oddly enough, in my somewhat frazzled state this more lighthearted offering from Jen Bryant didn't capture my fancy to the same degree as The Trial or Ringside, 1925. Pretty sure that has more to do with me than anything else, though. I predict actual kids will happily latch onto the mystery, and absorb a thing or two about Vietnam-era America along the way.
	Anything But Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin (4th grade and up) Date Read: June 10th Lately, I've been cultivating an attitude about the preponderance of characters in fiction who love writing and/or dream of becoming writers themselves. I hereby make an exception for Jason Blake of Anything But Typical. Is it because he's autistic? Not exactly. Is it because his voice is unique? To some extent. Or is it because he posts his original stories on a fanfic website instead of toting around a beloved poetry notebook? You bet your sweet patootie. Yup, that's all it took to keep my eyes from rolling at yet another character with literary ambitions. Jason's deliberate, logical, and web-savvy approach to his writing put a new spin on the stereotype and won me over. Add to that short chapters, and the fact that I find the autistic point of view endlessly fascinating, and it's no wonder the pages turned so effortlessly. (Plot summary, first chapter excerpt and so forth here.)
	Shadowed Summer by Saundra Mitchell (Middle school) Date Read: June 13th In spite of the hoardes of folks who thought this was a great read, and in spite of the fact that Shadowed Summer ought to appeal to someone who counts Wait Till Helen Comes among her all-time favorite books, I somehow managed to remain unengaged. There wasn't anything I actually disliked or found fault with; it just didn't grab me. I stuck around to see how the mystery would unravel, though, and got rewarded with a nice twist in the end. No harm, no foul.
	Hate List by Jennifer Brown (High school) Date Read: June 14th Five months ago, Valerie Leftman's boyfriend, Nick, opened fire on their school cafeteria. Shot trying to stop him, Valerie inadvertently saved the life of a classmate, but was implicated in the shootings because of the list she helped create. A list of people and things she and Nick hated. The list he used to pick his targets. Now, after a summer of seclusion, Val is forced to confront her guilt as she returns to school to complete her senior year. Haunted by the memory of the boyfriend she still loves and navigating rocky relationships with her family, former friends and the girl whose life she saved, Val must come to grips with the tragedy that took place and her role in it, in order to make amends and move on with her life. There's a sketchy line between the way things look and the way things are -- sketchy enough that it's not always easy to tell which side you're on. Hate List is real enough to make you sit up and wonder. In middle school, I floated on the fringes of a crowd that would eventually become the loser-freaks. As time went by, their eyeliner, reading material, and boot soles all darkened. I stuck with them through V.C. Andrews and Depeche Mode, then drifted away when they began graduating to Anne Rice and Marlboros. If I hadn't bailed, would I have noticed if one of them blew a fuse and began crossing the line? Maybe. Like Valerie, could I have missed the the shift of their customary death-centered banter into something more ominous? Probably. On the other hand, could I have found myself on the Hate List? Entirely possible. By high school I'd firmly entrenched myself in the Nobody in Particular clan, but I can remember laughing while some higher member of the food chain jacked up Jason Hills like it was some kind of indoor sport. Creepier yet, one girl I ate lunch with swore I'd tormented her little sister in elementary school, yet I don't have the slightest recollection. And when somebody finds their way to the edge, that's all it might take, really. (Available in September)
	A Season of Gifts by Richard Peck (5th grade and up) Date Read: June 15th Reading this book is like returning to a beloved front porch and finding there's still one glass of cold lemonade waiting in the pitcher. The town has changed around her in the last couple decades, but Grandma Dowdel is still Grandma Dowdel: scheming, trigger-happy, and one step ahead of the law. And as belligerently good-natured as ever underneath it all. It's 1958 now and the Dowdel grandkids are all grown up, so this last installment comes down to us through Bobby, the preacher's kid next door. That distance is a big part of what makes this book work, I think. Seeing Mrs. Dowdel through fresh eyes means we don't have to be made aware of how much she's aged since the days of A Year Down Yonder. And watching her from across the canna lilies instead of across the kitchen table lets even seasoned readers be surprised at the stunts the old lady cooks up. Passing references to people and places will conjure up past adventures, but they're never hammered into full view. All of which is a roundabout way of saying that Richard Peck never overplays his hand. As far as I'm concerned the man is the crown prince of children's literature. (Available in September)
	Alvin Ho: Allergic to Camping, Hiking, and Other Natural Disasters by Lenore Look (2nd grade and up) Date Read: June 20th What's the difference between expectations and predictability? Anybody who knows Alvin Ho expects him to be 3/4 panicked at the thought of surviving in the wilderness for a weekend. Also on the docket: avoidance, overcompensation, and fiascos, punctuated with Anibelly antics, Shakespearean swearing, a good cry (or two), and a gutful of giggles. That you can expect all this yet still be surprised and delighted by how it all unfolds means that Lenore Look has walloped predictability right between the eyes. Series-wise, she's got a heckuva good thing rolling here, for as long as she can keep us guessing.
	Magic Elizabeth by Norma Kassirer (3rd grade and up) Date Read: June 21st Love-love-loved this as a kid, and thank goodness, it still holds up now that I'm an opinionated former bookseller and published author. With its cats, dolls, spooky old houses, gingerbread, and a touch of what might really be magic, it's hard to imagine any little girl being able to resist this old-fashioned charmer. Matter of fact, this former little girl still isn't sorry she parted with $65 for a hardcover edition half a dozen years ago...
	Al Capone Shines My Shoes by Gennifer Choldenko (Middle school) Date Read: June 23rd Sequel-lovers, rejoice. You want more of Moose, Annie, Jimmy, and the Alcatraz gang? More of Piper's conniving, Natalie's button-counting, and Trixle's...infuriating Trixle-ness? Secret passageways and plots? Maybe even an in-the-flesh brush with "Scarface" Capone himself? Baby, you got it. It's all there and more, driven by Moose's voice and Choldenko's impeccable research. As for the plot... Imagine reaching into your shirt pocket and finding a new note, in all-too-familiar handwriting: Your turn. Makes the back of your neck ripple, doesn't it? Now here's the part where I throw you for a loop. In spite of all that praise, I was probably halfway through the book when I began to suspect I didn't really need a follow-up to Al Capone Does My Shirts after all. When it comes to sequels, I have a strong preference for companion novels over continuations. For me, the desire to know what happens next rarely trumps my satisfaction with a skillfully open-ended conclusion. If you're the same, consider that before pouncing on the shoe-shining edition of Moose's adventures. Everybody else, bear in mind this reaction is coming from someone who still hasn't read the final installment of Harry Potter(!) (Available in September)
	Days of Little Texas by R.A. Nelson (High school) Date Read: June 25th Orphaned by a meth lab fire at six...a faith healer and evangelist preacher at ten...by sixteen, Ronald Earl "Little Texas" Pettway finds himself haunted by doubts. And, maybe, the ghost of a girl he couldn't heal. When his aunt orchestrates a revival on the grounds of a plantation so notorious the devil himself is said to have walked there in 1934, the stage is set for a show of faith like no other. Come one, come all... A swirl of the surreal wound through this tale, coyly leading me from evangelism to ghosts to devilment with nary a whisper of disbelief; meanwhile, short chapters conspired to pull me further and further in until there was no escape. There's also an oddly appealing air of electricity and decay surrounding most every character but Little Texas himself, to the extent that readers who savored Lesley M.M. Blume's creepy-gothic Tennyson should feel right at home. In this case, however, the sophistication and weight of the story teeter much more precariously along the thin line between YA and adult.
	Love, Aubrey by Suzanne LaFleur (5th grade and up) Date Read: June 28th A gentle, sensitive portrait of a kid wading through more heartbreak than most people have a right to. If a kid has to live through such a family-shattering trauma, you'd hope to kingdom come there are as many understanding, adept adults in the real world as there are in Aubrey's.