Cybil Challenge

My two favorite Cybils

3 Comments / 2009, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Feminism, Fiction, Young Adult /

When TW was reading The Disreputable History of Frankie Ladnau-Banks she made it sound like just another coming of age story… turns out, it’s a hell of a lot more than that. It’s not even just another girl dates one boy but likes another, boarding school, coming of age story.

This little book is one of the best pieces of YA I’ve ever read. Ever. But, then again, it speaks to the feminist in me.

I see that my behavior disrupted the smooth running of your patriarchal establishment.

Heh.

I’m buying it. A couple of copies actually. Maybe one of our girls will develop just a little bit more “Frankie Landau-Banks-ness” if they read it.

After I finished DHoFLB, I picked up the middle grade, Diamond Willow written by Helen Frost (whose Printz Honor book, Keesha’s House, I loved.) I was a little worried about it because it’s prose… written in diamond shape…with bolded words that tell another mini story.

I worried for nothing.

I loved this book. Totally different from Keesha’s House.

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Jellaby

1 Comment / 2009, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Comics & Graphic Novels, Cybil Challenge, Fiction, Young Adult /

Jellaby is the graphic novel that Liz picked up rather than finishing Into the Volcano. She finished it pretty quickly and when I asked her about it, she never even mentioned the boy who was a primary character in the book. She talked about the girl and the really scary man (that really scary man was something she mentioned quite a bit, I’m surprised she didn’t dream about him herself!)

Anyway, I read it – and yes indeed, there is a scary man. There’s also a couple of weird kids and a weird purple monster and a dysfunctional mom and bullies at school and wow, that’s a lot of stuff happening in a really short graphic novel that has fewer words than a lot of graphic novels I’ve read.

It’s a busy little book and it ended with a cliffhanger, so now I have to go and get the next Jellaby book for Liz – but not for me, I don’t care enough to read anymore of them and besides, she’ll tell me what happens.

PS. Liz still says Chiggers is the best graphic novel we’ve read this year.

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The Graveyard Book

3 Comments / 2009, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction, Young Adult /

The Graveyard Book is indeed worthy of the Newberry (whatever that means) – it’s excellent. An excellent story, excellently written. It is significantly better than Coraline.

But – I could not persuade any of the kids to read it.

Prince J looked at it and said “interesting, maybe I’ll read it this weekend” – but he didn’t. I wasn’t interested and only said that to appease me.

RJ took the book from TW and said she’d read it – after TW told her she MUST, it was THAT GOOD and after I told her that she had 24 hours to read it because I would want it… she read a couple of chapters, put it down and picked up Dracula instead. She even chose to re-read bits of Breaking Dawn for the 800th time rather than read more of The Graveyard Book.

This, I’m afraid, is one of those books we’ll have to force our kids to read – and they’ll like it well enough, but it won’t be until they’re 25 that they’ll really appreciate the mastery of the story or the characters or the writing. It’s a shame. It’s the best Newberry winner I’ve read in a long time.

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3 more Cybils

1 Comment / 2009, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Non-Fiction, Poetry /

Astronaut Handbook was cute, nicely drawn but not my cup of tea, really.

Honeybee was pretty good, better than I expected. I preferred the prose to the poetry but even some of the poetry drew me in. Young poetry and prose readers won’t be turned off by this, though in some places it reads a little older than I expected.

Ain’t Nothing But a Man was excellent. Maybe it’s just because I liked John Henry as a kid and so was already drawn to the story or maybe because it was just really interesting? I don’t know, but this is another one I’d like to own. (The information about how to be a Historian, in the back, was also excellent.) If I was a Cybils judge, I’d be sorely tempted to vote this one as the winner. (I know, I haven’t read the others yet but… still, this is going to be tough to beat.)

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Three Cybils

1 Comment / 2009, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Comics & Graphic Novels, Cybil Challenge, Fiction /

First Cybil for the weekend, Big, Bad Bunny. Ho hum. It was cute but I don’t think it’s a book any of my kids would have crawled into my lap to hear over and over again.

Next, Mo Willems strikes again! I love new my toy isn’t nearly good as Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus but… it’s got something that made me smile all the way through it. Even when I read it a second time, over TW’s shoulder. (How come the elephant has a name but the pig is just “piggie”?)

Last one, graphic novel Into the Volcano. Great illustrations. Pretty decent story. I have a feeling Liz won’t like this one as much as the last couple of graphic novels I’ve given her, but we’ll find out this weekend. Updated: Liz liked it but not as much as she liked Chiggers.  It took her all weekend to finish it – not normal graphic novel behavior for her.  She usually refuses to put them down until she’s finished them.

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Cabinet of Wonders

1 Comment / 2009, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

I loved, loved, LOVED The Cabinet of Wonders! I started it last night and could easily have just read it straight through. But, sleep is important to us old folk so I didn’t. As soon as I finished it, I handed it to RJ telling her she must, must MUST read it right this second. I hope she likes it as much as I did.

What great characters – I want Iris’s power, errr curse, errr power, lol. Acid is cool. Petra is fabulous. I want Astrophil. And the marbles… now wouldn’t those come in handy?

Fantastic story – just the right length and pace. Perfect. Good Cybils finalist! Great, even.

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Chiggers

1 Comment / 2009, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Comics & Graphic Novels, Cybil Challenge, Fiction /

Chiggers was a lot more popular with my 10 year old graphic novel lover than it was with me. She read it first and reported that “it was better than good but not quite great” – I read it and thought it “ok but not quite good”.

But, I’m really not a huge graphic novel fan.

The idea was a good one. Summer camp and teen girls. Freshmen or not quite freshmen in high school. The mean girl thing. The feeling like you don’t fit in. The feeling like everyone changed and you’re still you. Very good idea and I suspect that’s why Liz liked it and I didn’t.

She’s not a summer camp fan. While she’s not a teen, she is in a new place and trying to figure out where she fits. And again, she really likes graphic novels.

I think she would say this should be in the finals for a Cybil award.

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Audrey, Wait!

2 Comments / 2009, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Young Adult /

I didn’t expect to really love Audrey, Wait! but that’s what happened. I think I loved it simply because I’ve survived two teenage girls (with two more to go.) Audrey’s life is like the normal teen girl x10.

I laughed out loud, over and over again, because it was all so totally believable to me. With all of the musicians Michelle-Belle was with, one of them could totally have written a song about her and BAM – instant fame – and instant chaos because teen girls don’t handle stuff well, heck nobody handles fame well without help. And you know what teens are like when it comes to asking parents for help… hahaha.

Will the YA target audience love Audrey, Wait! as much as I did? I have no idea. They’ll probably roll their eyes a lot, debate the merits of the songs included in the heading of each chapter, and head to their favorite band’s fan site and talk trash about the lead singer’s ex-girlfriend or something.

Hah.

Should this be a Cybils finalist? Hmmm, maybe. I’ve certainly read better YA fiction but I’ve also read worse. It’s always good to have solid female characters in YA books. OK yes, I’m good with it being a finalist.

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4 Cybils I did love – or at least like a whole lot

1 Comment / 2009, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Young Adult /

I didn’t plan to read quite so many of these last night but it happened and it was fun. There were four that I loved or liked a whole heck of a lot.

First, a non-fiction MG/YA – 11 Planets A New View of the Solar System – the only concern I have about this book is its listing as a YA. It’s a little young and a little light for a YA. Though, honestly at 45, I found the refresher pretty interesting and even helpful when I started reading Unca Joe’s latest book Marsbound (but that’s another post entirely.) So maybe it is YA – for the really non-science geek crowd? It was well written, well organized, great photos, interesting charts in the back. It almost made me wish I was in 4th grade and needed to write a report about the planets.

Next, A River of Words (non-fiction picture book) – what a fantastic book about William Carlos Williams. Great illustrations, they were perfect and really helped make the book so interesting. I’d like to own this one.

After that, Houndsley and Catina and the Quiet Time hahaha – great book and not just because Catina feels the way I do about the snow (or she did at the beginning of the book.) Nice illustrations. This is a book I think all of my big kids would have asked me to read to them over and over again – and then enjoyed reading on their own.

Last but not least, a last minute read when I needed an easy quick book to read so that I could start Unca Joe’s book as soon as TW had finished it – and she wasn’t quite finished – Alvin Ho (middle grade fiction.) I laughed out loud. A lot. It reminded me a little bit of the graphic novel, American Born Chinese – without the illustrations (though there were some and the ones that were there were fabulous.) When Alvin has his “Astroman” incident I seriously laughed out loud which is good since I’m like Alvin’s dad – do not touch my toys, darn it! I loved, loved, loved this book and I’m hoping to convince Liz to read it.

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Finished 2 Cybils that I did not love…

1 Comment / 2009, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Don't Read This, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry /

The problem with having so many easy readers and picture books on a challenge list is that I can read a half dozen in an hour and then figuring out how to properly blog them is difficult. I’m going to give this a shot… group them by how much I liked them, or didn’t like them… as the case may be.

The Cybils finalists that I did not love were America at War (poems) and Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek (a fiction picture book.) It’s not that they were bad, I just did not LOVE them and I want to love Cybil books. 😉

The poems in America at War were fine. There were some we’d all find familiar and children should definitely be exposed to them. There were some that I’d like us all to find familiar and those were the ones I was happy to see in the book. There were others that… just bored me. And poetry about war should not bore me.

As for Abe and his friend Austin – I liked the premise. I just didn’t like the way the author told the story. While I agree that children should be introduced to the idea that “history” is only a version of what may or may not have happened… I think the whole “back up, have them crawl across the log” was ridiculous. Then the “where’s Austin” page, umm really was that necessary? I don’t know, I just didn’t like the book and when I finished it I was glad I no longer have children who might bring this home and expect me to enjoy reading it to them.

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