I was nervous about Keesha’s House. It’s a tiny little book – poetry. Ugh. The Printz poetry selections have not been bad but they haven’t been great. This one… great. One of the best Printz Award books.
These are amazing stories and I’d love Frost to write a book featuring each one of them. An entire series about the kids in (and around) Keesha’s House. Or maybe Joe’s story, that would be good too.
aye yi yi just typing the title of this book leads me to worry about all of the porn spam I’m going to get. Don’t be surprised if you stumble in here and find comments closed on this post…
It was good but maybe not as good as the third book in the series, the Undead Kama Sutra. Once again, there were a lot of characters – I’d hoped that we would get a bit more background on some of the ones who appear in the third book, but we didn’t – we just got the dirt on Odin (which was helpful!) And we got a tiny glimpse of Carmen.
What was confusing to me was Felix’s feelings about “feeding” in this book – they didn’t gel with his behavior in book three. It took a long time to get all of that resolved and explained but that’s the price you pay for reading books in a series out of order.
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I really really liked the characters in Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. I did not want the book to end the way it did.
I wanted them to live in Mrs Cobbs house.
I wanted them to head off to the territories.
I wanted them to start a great baseball team, the way baseball ought to be played.
I wanted them to hang out with some more whales, but not THAT way.
I wanted a lot of things to happen in this book – but most of those didn’t happen. Still… great book. Probably greater because those things didn’t happen.
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Please! No MORE Short Stories! I cannot take it anymore.
When I started Women in their Beds, TW said “Why are you reading THAT?” Ugh. My heart sunk. She had bought the book, after all. She’d read it, after all. Still, I had hope. We don’t always agree on books.
Ugh.
This is the problem with choosing books for a challenge based on something like “choosing some from every color”, lol. This is also what happens when you buy books simply because you like their titles or like their covers. This is also what happens when you buy a book, hate it and leave it on your shelf anyway.
I think that’s going to be my next “challenge” – get rid of the stuff we both really hated (except for that one book that I want to burn… I don’t want anyone to read it so I’m going to keep it here, hidden in the rainbow of books where I can keep an eye on it and make sure nobody else is harmed by reading it.)
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When I created the Printz Challenge, I paid absolutely ZERO attention to which books I’d be reading. When I add them to my library reserve list, I don’t look at the listing in the card catalog at all. So when they arrive, I’m often a wee bit surprised by what I’m holding in my hand.
A Wreath for Emmett Till was one of those surprising “what the heck is this” moments. It’s a tiny little book, it looks more like a kids book than a YA. But then you open it and you realize – ah it’s a poetry. Sonnets. Written in Petrarchan Rhyme. With a lot of big words YA kids will not know. Tough read. Interesting though. Also led to TW giving me MORE instructions for her funeral.
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I didn’t have very high hopes for I Am the Messenger but it turned out to be one of the more interesting YA books I’ve read in a good long while.
Interesting because it was different. No vampires. Not really one of those typical high school “problem” books, though there were plenty of “problems” to go around.
Really interesting storyline. Over on Amazon, a review or a description or something says “unpretentious” – good description. I like that in a YA book. So many of them are very pretentious…
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I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone is a great YA book. It’s a great book in general. And like sassymonkey said, it’s a chain smoking, drinking book … which maybe means it isn’t a great YA book after all? Hah.
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On Tuesday, Prince J said several times — “No more short stories, YAY!” or ” Thank goodness we are finished with short stories!” The boy is not a fan of short stories and I can understand that. Some short stories for kids and teens really really stink. But, some are fantastic.
That sums up how I felt about Black Juice. I loved some of the stories, others I wanted to just sleep through.
The elephants – loved.
Wooden bride – loved.
Yowlinins – loved.
The tar pits – fascinated but not sure I loved it. I’d like to read the book, she should write the short story into a book.
The Undead Kama Sutra is another one of those books plucked off of the “just returned” library shelf. Both the title and the cover were appealing, so into the bag it went.
Darn, it’s the third book in a series. I hate reading books out of order – even if you don’t have to read them all to know what’s going on, I think you get more out of the characters if you’ve watched them in the books that came before.
It’s a wee bit Christopher Moore-like, a wee bit Carl Hiaasen-like, it’s even a week bit Douglas Adams-like. It was also a wee bit amusing. Gotta go back and read the first two!
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Chanda’s Secrets started off depressing and pretty much stayed that way through the entire book. Is it even possible to write a non-depressing book about kids and the AIDS problem? Probably not.
It was a good book. Worthy of the Printz. It ended well. And, I might want to read the sequel someday. Maybe.