Artichoke's Heart by Susanne Supplee

Artichoke's Heart
Suzanne Supplee

I had marked Artichoke's Heart for purchase several months ago when I read the reviews of several respected bloggers. I must say they were all right -- this is a wonderful book that is about so much more than what you weigh.

Rosemary is an only child. Her mother was seventeen when she was born and she's never known her father. Her mother was determined to succeed despite having a child at a young age and she had developed and extremely bust hair and nail salon. In fact, Rose immersed herself so deeply in the store that in many ways Rosemary has felt like she's second place and she compensates by eating, and eating a lot. Now she's fifteen and has ballooned to 200 pounds and hates herself. Her mom and her Aunt Mary are on her case constantly to lose weight -- they give her a treadmill for Christmas -- but she just wants to make love to Mr. Hershey, Mr. Reeses, and Mr. M&M. It's not that Rosemary doesn't know that it takes to lose weight, she just can't find the will to start and stay on a diet.

And then comes Kyle -- a boy who appears to be interested in her no matter what she weighs. Rosemary now has the motivation and she manages to start to take off the pounds. She also makes friends with Kay-Kay, a thin girl who has her own set of problems.

This is not a simple book about a girl who wants to lose weight -- it's about a girl who in the midst of a family crisis (which I haven't mentioned but plays an important part in the book) learns to love herself

My Favorite Day of the Year

Yesterday was by far my favorite day of the year. Why? Because it's the day that my big book order arrived. For those not familiar with school budgets, the process for spending money is to beg and then spend it as quickly as you can before it's taken away. I'm actually very lucky because my principal is really good about giving me money every year. Unfortunately that situation is proving to be the exeption for many school librarians.

So the book ordered arrived and I' ve been slowly unpacking the boxes. There are tons of books that I've read about in blogs and have been aching to read. I'm just not sure where to start. These are the books I'm debating about right now (with about 1/2 of the boxes unpacket):

Unwind by Shusterman
Missing Girl by Mazer
Lock and Key by Dessen
Beastly by Flinn
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by Lockhart

These are only a few of the fiction books I've gotten in but right now they are top of what I want to read. The problem is that of the new books, I probably would love to read about 250 or so of them and there's no way, NO Way I can do that -- I have at least 50 books I've bought but haven't yet read and probably another 20 sitting behind my desk at school. It's a good problem to have, this too much to read, but it's overwhelming too.

The Silver Cup

The Silver Cup
Constance Leeds
2007

Set in the year 1095 in Medieval Germany, The Silver Cup is the story of Anna. Anna lives with her father Gunter who is a trader and travels to nearby towns to trade his goods. Anna’s life is not easy – her mother died when she was young and even as a child she does the work of a woman. To make matters worse, her aunt who lives next door looks down upon her and does anything she can to make Anna’s life miserable. Although Anna is close to her cousin Lukas, she feels like an outcast.

One day Anna accompanies her father to the nearby city of Worms where he conducts business with a Jewish man. Anna is both fascinated and horrified by the Jews – she like all the Christians around her has been brought up to believe that Jews are born with tails and horns and can never be forgiven for murdering Christ.

In the world outside Anna’s small village, the Pope has called for a crusade and many (including Anna’s cousin Martin) are eager to go. Unfortunately, the horrible Count Emich has been gathering troops under the guise of taking them on crusade but in reality he’s using the opportunity to rape, murder, and pillage all the Jews in the various towns he encounters.

Anna and her father arrive in Worms the day after Count Emich has left. What they find leaves them vomiting in the streets from the sheer horror. Anna does find one survivor – a girl named Leah – and she insists on bringing her home, even though it will bring problems and she will become even a greater outcast.

I must say I really liked this book. It gave me a really good feel for life in Germany during this time period. I enjoyed the characters and felt that they were well rounded and believable. The pages in Worms where Anna and her father witness the results of the slaughter of the Jews are truly wrenching and yet not inappropriate for most middle school students. This will be a great addition to my historical fiction collection.

Do Not Pass Go

Do Not Pass Go
Kirkpatrick Hill

Deet doesn’t know how well he has it. After all, his family is poor, his parents are irresponsible and unorganized, and he feels like he’s the only one in the family who has it all together. He works school, he’s organized to the point of being anal retentive, and he helps take care of his sisters.

Then the unimaginable happens. Deet’s father is arrested for using drugs. His dad has been working two jobs and he’s been caught taking drugs to stay awake during his night job. He’s now in jail, awaiting a trial and sentencing. Deet’s life has taken a complete shift. At first he’s embarrassed and ashamed that his father would do anything so stupid, and then he’s scared for him – after all jail can be a pretty horrible place. His mother, who at the beginning of the book comes across as completely irresponsible, changes immediately. She gets a job in order to have money coming in to the family and she forces herself to go to the jail to visit he husband. Deet too visits his father and begins to learn that there are all types of people there. While all the prisoners had made some sort of mistake, they were certainly not all bad people. He also learns that the ways that people react to their family members being in jail can differ greatly. He also begins to make friends, which is something he’d never really allowed himself to do before.

On the whole I liked this book, but I do feel it has it flaws. Hill sets out to show that lots of different types of people make mistakes and end up in jail and that “Jail wasn’t the end of the world,” but he’s a bit heavy-handed in his approach. I do think, however, that readers with family and friends in jail might get some comfort from this book.

The other issue I have with it has to do with religion. Deet is an atheist. I don’t have a problem with that – I think it’s important that many different religious viewpoints are expressed in books. Deet’s grandfather is a unforgiving, mean Christian man who’s convinced that his son is going to hell. It’s the combination of the two that bothers me because Hill seems to be reverting to stereotypes when it comes to religion.

The Compound

The Compound
S. A. Bodeen

My goodness, what a book! It’s one I’ve been eager to read since I encountered several blog reviews of it. It was a one-day-don’t-put-it-down read.

The worst has happened. Eli is wakened by his father one night and told that nuclear weapons had been fired on the United States. Fortunately, Eli’s father is a billionaire and has prepared for a nuclear event. He has had a shelter prepared for his family and he frantically ushers them into The Compound where they can safely live for the next fifteen years. In all the confusion, however, Eli’s twin brother and his grandmother have been left behind and there’s no opening the door to rescue them.

Fast-forward six years. Eli and his family have lived in relative comfort but know nothing about what is going on above ground – how much, if any, of the world is left. Although Eli’s father had seemingly thought about everything they would need, there have been some failures and it looks as though their food supply will not last the required fifteen years. His father has made some contingency plans for emergencies but nobody wants to even consider falling back on these plans.

Eli was the self-described evil twin before he entered the Compound and he’s so traumatized from losing his brother that he withdraws from the family. He cannot stand skin-to-skin contact with others and he sticks to a steady routine that helps him maintain his distance from them. He does worry about the dwindling food supply and is not happy about the contingency plans. When he discovers that the internet still works, he begins to question his father’s motives. As things become worse, Eli races to save his family before the unthinkable happens.

Revelations

Revelations: A Blue Blood Novel
Melissa De La Cruz

Revelations is the third book in the Blue Bloods series. In order to review the first two books, let me quote from my review of Blue Bloods (the first novel):

When we think of the term "Blue Bloods" we think of those who are fabulously rich and can trace their wealth back generations. That is what the term means in this book, but it also means so much more. Blue Bloods are vampires -- have been vampires since they were expelled from the Kingdom of Heaven. They want atonement -- to be accepted back into Heaven. Until then they live their lives (or cycles as they are called) using their wealth to bring culture to and do good for others. The Metropolitan Museum of Art? Founded by Blue Bloods. You get the idea. Although there is a theme of reincarnation, the vampires are born human and when they are fifteen, they start changing. Schuyler has just discovered that she is a vampire, not an easy thing for her to accept at first. But worse things are happening. Vampires are supposed to be immortal, but somehow the young teenage vampires are dying and the older vampires seem to be in denial about what's going on. Schuyler is in danger and so she and a couple of her friends set out to figure out who is causing the vampire deaths.

In Revelations, it is painfully obvious who the evil ones are – Silver Bloods. Silver Bloods are vampires who prey on other vampires. Unlike Blue Bloods, Silver Bloods care nothing for atonement – they just want to win the ages-long war they have had with the Blue Bloods. What isn’t obvious is exactly who all the Silver Bloods are and it is that revelation at the end of the book that is shocking and leads one to count the days until the next book is released. From the beginning Schuyler is in danger, but while some of her enemies are obvious (she is, after all, in love with a man who is quite taken), others are (to use a cliché) hiding in plain sight. The climax takes place in Rio de Janeiro and is certainly shocking.

Overall, Revelations is a decent book. It moves quickly and I never guessed the ending. I would say it suffers from being a middle book in a series. It moves the series along, but there’s not a good resolution to any of the plot lines because there are more books to come. I read somewhere that Melissa De La Cruz is planning ten books in the series – I’m not sure her fans will be willing to wait seven more years to a conclusion.

The Right Not to Read (yes, more about summer reading)

I have loved to read since I was seven my first “chapter book.” As a child I read non-stop – even reading as I walk down the halls at school (occasionally I can still be caught doing that!). I had great plans for this summer – plans to get through 50 – 75 books and catch up on my to-be-read pile.

It didn’t happen. I didn’t come close. Why? Because when it came down to it, I wasn’t in the mood. I’ve been on several vacations. I’ve watched way too much tv (I’ve become hooked on Battlestar Galactica – yes, I am a geek). Now I’m hooked on the Olympics, staying up way past my bedtime and having the tv on every day to make sure I don’t miss anything special.

I have read some, but much of it has been adult murder mysteries and thrillers – genres I don’t review in this blog.

Am I sorry about this lack of reading and blogging? Absolutely not. It’s been a good summer and I’ve enjoyed the things I’ve chosen to do. After all, this is my vacation and I should do with it as I please. And that’s why forced summer reading is wrong. If I, at 43 years old, can do what I want during my summer vacation, why can students do the same thing? This absolutely does not mean that I think kids shouldn’t be reading – I opened up the library at my school several times during the summer in order to encourage summer reading. But I do think it should be voluntary.

Just my 2 cents worth.