Great book for those hard to please boys

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Awesome, fun read!  Give to those high schoolers who don't like to read and I guarantee they will like this.  Should appeal to both guys and girls.  The pace is high octane fast!  Essentially, Perry Stormaire is a senior, with a lawyer father who runs his life (read: Tiger Dad) and he is trying to get into Columbia.  The family has invited a foreign exchange student into their house for the year and instead of a gorgeous co-ed, they get Gobi.  Plain, banal, and needing much help, Gobi, whom good guy Perry looks out for at school.


But when his parents pressure him into taking Gobi to the prom as his date, the train comes off the track and that's when it all starts to go completely nuts!  So if you have teens who like action, assassins, mysteries, underdog heroes, a touch of romance, and some very close calls with death, the police and general mayhem, give them this book.


I can't tell you any more than to say that it kept me at the edge of my seat, so much that I finished reading it in two nights.  The characters are great.  The writing is funny, touching and really draws you into the moment. Two of my favorite lines from the book are: "I couldn't remember the theme of the prom but it seemed to be something along the lines of Social Darwinism Under the Stars.  Lights and shimmering tinsel had transformed the gymnasium into a pulsating soup of glandular hostility." I mean reallY!  How can you not love it?


I will say that having read some of the complaints about this book, you need to think of this book as a fantasy book, not a reality book.  It's like a die-hard movie.  Clearly, you will have to suspend belief. But if you can do that, it will be a fun ride.


A nice touch was having each chapter open with a college application question which the chapter then proceeded to answer in a roundabout way, which all plays into the climatic ending.


A must read for this year!


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Vampyres of Hollywood

Vampyres of Hollywood by Adrienne Barbeau
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I stand by my earlier statement in a review of a vampire book where the author had changed the vampire rules so that they could walk in the sun: YOU RUIN VAMPIRES AND YOU RUIN THE TENSION. There is something deliciously dark (no pun, or maybe, yes, pun intended) about having to live in the night.  Darn it! They are creatures of the night! When you change it, you ruin it.  I'm sorry, that's just the way I feel. Moving on....

So, the rest of this story features a madcap murder mystery that barely holds together.  It is told in alternating chapters by the police detective and the Chatelaine of Hollywood (head vampire and scream queen actress) as they both try to figure out who is killing actors, agents, directors.  There is some language and mentions of bondage and S&M clubs and the sheer brutality and gore of the murder scenes pop this up to 11th grade at least if not a faculty read.

I think the authors traded in a fast moving plot for character development.  I never felt an emotional connection to any of the main characters and therefore didn't care if they lived or died, making it hard to get through the end of the book.  I did finish it, but at the end instead of being breathless at the huge fight, I was ho hum.

And the huge fight at the end?  Doesn't make any sense.  It's not even worth writing a spoiler to try and figure it out.


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Collection Development: A Few Thoughts

This year we have a new headmaster.  While, this is nothing new to us in terms of what we do, we have found some small changes in policy are necessary.

Fortunately, what that means is that we are getting more departments involved in the selection of materials.  Of course, one of those hot button areas is the health and sex education sections of the collection.  One thing I would advise that school librarians do is to periodically look over your section, take the whole section down and then ask the relevant teachers to come over (for coffee and donuts, wine and cheese, whatever works for your school) and have a short meeting and go over the books that you currently have and have some print outs of books that you may want to order.

By opening the dialog and asking for help on a proactive basis and by having the materials right in front of them, you can ask if the materials meet the curriculum and the needs of the students.  Since that section can be a hot button issue, you can also begin to create some allies and a conversation about what it is that they need and how you can help them with resources.

Furthermore, with this particular subject matter, I would advise that you treat material on it as you would graphic novels.  My policy with graphic novels is to never put one on the shelf until I have looked or read every page, because graphic novels can look innocuous and yet be very adult and you don't want to label them for middle school, when they are for high school only.  I don't trust reviews on graphic novels.

Death Comes to Pemberly

Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It's tough to take on one of the most beloved books of all time.  Well, at least if you love Pride and Prejudice, you REALLY love it.  So, anyone messing with it had better get it right.


I've tried to read several books that were "sequels" to P&P mostly because I miss those characters so much that I want someone to get it right.  PD James does and she doesn't.  She does what she does best, which is write a mystery.  She tries really hard to stay true to the characters and to move us down the road to finding out what has happened and what is going to happen in their lives and for that I think she deserves some credit because she did do it in a pretty entertaining way.  I was intrigued enough to read the whole book and I am one of those people who will drop a book after the first 50 pages.


I think she also had a vision in mind for Lydia and Wickham (Did he do it? Will he be convicted?) and for that I love her.  You can tell that for all these years the way Austen left Lydia and Wickham in Elizabeth and Darcy's world as their family connection has bothered her and James needed to write out her own version of how to correct it for the Darcy's.  You have to love her for going to this trouble.


However, what is missing from the book is characterization.  We get a lot of plot and little of the entrancing interactions between characters that was so entertaining in P&P.  And that is where my chief disappointment lies.  She tried so hard and obviously had a clear vision of where she wanted to go.  She was thorough in her use of language of the time (although not as gifted as Austen, but who could be), but she lacked the interplay, dialog, scenes and outright fighting and comedy that marked P&P as such a classic.


In the end, it is worth reading to see her unique vision, but it is not a true sequel.  I am still waiting for that to be written.


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Vesper by Jeff Sampson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Emily Webb is a geek. Well, that's how it starts out.  Hmmm.  Actually, it starts with her half in and out of a window all dressed up and uncharacteristically tarted up for a night on the town that her usual 16-year-old self would be mortified she was considering having.


What is going on with Emily Webb?  In fact, what is going on in her town?  Emily Cooke is murdered, and a chain of events is kicked off that has the reader racing through pages trying to figure out what is happening before something either kills Emily Webb from the outside or from inside her own body (what are these strange changes that come over her?  Are they getting worse?).


And what about the chapters that are interspersed in between her story where it appears Emily Webb has been captured and is being held prisoner?  What is going on?  What are those noises? I think something wicked is coming down the road.  Something delightfully wicked. Something for which I need to turn the page and read on.


Please, let there be more in this series!  I just can't stand the wait.


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The Glass Demon by Helen Grant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I finished her first book, The Vanishing of Katharina Linden, in a day.  I could not put it down.  It was smart, funny and uber-frightening.  This one ratchets the fright down and isn't funny at all, but is a speeding train of mystery and teen angst and murder!

Lin Fox is yanked off to Germany right when she should be in her last year of high school in England.  Her older sister is in the middle of a crisis, her mother and their younger brother Ru are something of an odd pair of ducks.  It is the father, a medieval scholar trying to get his professorship, who is the one who puts his family in danger with his obsessive need to find the Allerheiligen stained glass.  Glass so storied that many believe it to be cursed if not lost or destroyed hundreds of years earlier.

Faced with mounting bodies, all surrounded by pieces of glass, Lin and her new found (boy)friend Michel try to put it all together before something horrible happens closer to home.  Will she be able to find the Allerheiligen stained glass?  Will she find love?  Will she find the demon?

Read on!


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Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale, an Activist Finds Her Calling and Heals Herself by Rachel Lloyd
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was a little nervous about adding this book to the collection as it is a book about the sex trafficking trade.  However, it was a starred review and recommended for teens.  So, when it arrived, I put it on my list of books to read.


I was pleasantly surprised.  It was fabulous.  Ms. Lloyd is to be commended, not only for writing a wonderful book on a topic that many Americans don't think about (the American sex slave, child prostitute), but for opening up her own life for as a lens to use for looking at the trade.


While there is harsh language and sometimes there are some situations that are described that are distasteful(abuse, etc.), she is able to convey all of it without resorting to graphic descriptions of the sex act itself.  So, while it is definitely a grade 9 and above purchase, it should be a purchase for any high school library that has a group of students who are into social activism, who are inspired by women who make something of their lives or who are involved in Model United Nations and might be working on committees with topics dealing with sex trafficking issues.


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