We're Changing our Spots!

If you love to read, but don't have time in your busy schedule for another "activity," then this is for you. Write short reviews of your favorite books from the comfort of your own home - on this blog! Just send an email to the library (from the CircleTalk page) and let me know that you want to blog here. I'll set you up as an author; you can create your own screen name, then post your own recommendations.

Whenever you read a great story, you can pass the word on to your friends, and get good suggestions from them, too.

After all, this is supposed to be a place where teens can talk about books, so you guys should be the ones doing the talking:)

Un Lun Dun

by China Mieville

Zanna and Deeba find themselves trapped in another kind of London, and un-London, made up of all the best bits of trash that have been discarded by the "real" London.
The characters are fantastic creations: an old milk carton that acts like a puppy... broken umbrellas that move on their own... Skool, an old-fashioned sea-diving suit that holds a school of fish and walks about on land... a talking book of prohphecies... the Binja: ninja trashbins that defend the bridge whose entrance always moves...
The buildings are also fantastic creations, and the action, well, it's a fast-paced race to see if the Schwazzy (that's Zanna) can save unLondon from the Smog that threatens to eat everything. A terrific read, from beginning to end. And great little sketches by the author to illustrate his bizarre creations. Cool book.

Dragon's Keep

by Janet Carey

500 years ago, Merlin read the stars and made a prophecy. Rosalind will be the queen who fulfills that prophecy. But Rose was born with one finger that is actually a dragon's claw. Her mother is the only one who knows this, and she always keeps a pair of golden gloves on her daughter, to hide the claw. The rest of the villagers would think Rose a witch if they knew.

Life in the castle and the surrounding village is interrupted on several occasions by dragon attacks. The king sends his best knights to hunt it down, many times, and always losing many good men in the attempts.


When at last the dragon is killed, the villagers are shocked to learn she had a mate- Lord Faul. He comes to claim Rose as payment for Charsha's death, and he makes Rose his servant. Actually, she is to act as nanny to the young dragon pips when they hatch. They are dragons, to be sure, and full of fire, but eventually she learns to love them, and they her.

This story is a bit like The Lost Years of Merlin, with its dragons, knights, and medieval castle setting. There are royal secrets, an evil hag, and true friends. At the core, there is a girl working hard to find her own way in the world while still holding true to what being royalty is all about- protecting her village and its people.

The Ropemaker

by Peter Dickinson

Tilja lives in a valley that is protected from invasions by a magical forest, even though there isn't really any magic inside the valley itself. For generations, the women in her family have fed and sung to the creatures living in the forest to keep the magical boundary strong. And they've kept their purpose to themselves, since no one in their valley even believes in magic.

At the other end of the valley, the men of Tahl's family have maintained the glacier that blocks the northen passes in a similar fashion.

But this season, the magic is starting to fail, and Tilja, Tahl, and their grandparents, Meena and Alnor, set out on a perilous journey to find the magician who first created the boundary. Just getting through the forest is tricky, and nearly kills the men, but once on the other side, the four travelers are confronted with a world filled with lots of loose magic. Yet working magic in this world is forbidden, allowed only by the emperor's magician Watchers. How can the travelers find the mage they seek without using the little bit of magic that they do know? Even speaking his name causes a magical outburst that arouses the Watcher's suspicion.

This story isn't just about magic. It's also a tender story about families who love each other across generations, and love their homes as well, enough to risk deadly journeys to preserve its safety.

Feed, by Peter Dickinson

Titus and his friends live in a version of the future that's not too far from what's happening today. The Internet has become so wireless that every child has a feed implanted in their brains soon after they're born. This version of the internet can monitor your thoughts and give you suggestions for everything - what's in style, how to wear your hair.... Are you feeling sad? Then try these pills or go to this night club. You're a walking encyclopedia - anything you want to know, you can look up. You don't have to work at being smart. Sounds cool? No one in this book is happy, though they try hard to be.

When Titus meets Violet, she shows him some of the things the feed doesn't bother to tell him. Riots in other countries, a dead earth. Big corporations spew chemicals back into the ecosystem or have already used up all its natural resources. No one reads or writes anymore. Even though everyone's connected and can chat to each other via the feed in their heads, no one can express their thoughts clearly or with any kind depth. Too many feeds from the internet keep people from focusing on one thought long enough to draw a conclusion from it.

This book tries to tell today's teens that it's time for them to wake up from just going with the superficial flow of having fun and being cool. It's time to start paying attention to what's really happening with people's relationships (if you have 200 friends on FaceBook, are you really friends with each one?). It's also time to start paying attention to what society is doing to its evironment. How many mountains of used cell phones, TVs, or computers can the earth hold?

This book makes you think hard about stuff you've always taken for granted. What do you think about it?

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

The movie opens this weekend, and I can't wait to see how it will compare with the book. There's so much to say, it's hard to know where to start!

I love the action in this book. The plot races along at a very fast clip and the tension just keeps being wound tighter and tighter. Lyra is fantastic: brave and scared, determined and stubborn. For some of us, she is the ideal child: free to roam about town, play, explore, daydream... She doesn't have much structured time: no chores are mentioned, and being tutored only seems to happen when they can catch her. Sounds to me like the kind of childhood most kids dream of! Yet when the real work of finding Roger and saving all the children at Bolvangar needs to be done, she is willing to do the job, even though she is terrified of the evils she discovers.

I like the descriptions of all the people and places. From the gypsies in their longboats and the Roping meeting in the fens to the icy mountains of Svalbard, Pullman is a master at creating images.

Let's not forget the daemons. Talk about awesome! It would be cool to have a bit of yourself that can leap and fly - especially fly! - and swim and race and be an outward symbol of your mood as it changes. Boy, if I could figure out a person's mood just by looking, it would be a big help some days!

And Iorek Byrnison... well there's another fanscinating character. Some people say he's a father figure to Lyra. I don't know. He seems too bear-like to be a dad, but he sure is a great friend to her. What do you think?

If you haven't noticed, there are a lot of adults upset about these books, too. They think that because Philip Pullman is an atheist, his books are anti-religion and anti-God. We have a bunch of articles in the library that discuss these issues if you want to read more about them. They're on the table in the YA section. You can always post your ideas about it here, too.

Son of the Mob by Gordon Korman

This was a fast read, and funny, too. Vince is a nice guy who's just trying to spend time with his new girlfriend. The problem is that his dad, Mr. Luca, is a big mob boss, but Vince's girlfriend's dad is the FBI agent assigned to catch the Luca clan. Vince doesn't want to have anything to do with illegal things, but the more he tries to keep his family away from his girlfriend, the more illegal things he gets involved with. Most of the nastier side of mob business is kept out of the story, so this isn't gory or scary or even serious, and the "Uncles" who work for Mr. Luca are mostly caricatures - for example, Uncle Pampers is the mob hit man, but he sings karaoke in his spare time.

If you like Vince and hope he can escape from his family business and be a regular law-abiding citizen, read the 2nd book in this series: Son of the mob:hollywood hustle