Audiobook Review: "Half Brother" by Kenneth Oppel

Title: Half Brother
Author: Kenneth Oppel
Publisher: Brilliance Audio, 2010 (print version available from Scholastic)
Narrator: Daniel di Tomasso

After being dragged across the country from Toronto to Victoria, Canada, Ben's thirteenth birthday isn't what one might call normal. You see, the reason he was dragged across the country arrives on that day—a tiny bundle of chimp they name Zan. Ben's parents are planning to experiment and study Zan by teaching him sign language to see if species other than humans can communicate with actual language. At first Ben wants nothing to do with the experiment and Zan, but gradually, as he signs with Zan, he begins to love him as he would an actual brother,—even if Ben's behavioral psychologist father sees Zan as only an experiment. But what will happen to Zan once the experiment ends?

I enjoyed this story. Ben really grows attached to Zan, loves him like a real brother, and it's truly touching to see what lengths Ben goes to in order to protect his little brother. Oppel also brings the serious issues of animal rights and ethical practices in working with animals to the table. This takes place in the 1970s, so there aren't as many concerns in Ben's or his parents' minds, or in the university's that funds the project, as there might be in today's world.

The secondary characters made the book for me. I loved Peter—a hippie-like dude who takes care of Zan in the best ways possible, and who can talk to Ben like an equal. Peter becomes a big ally for Ben, and a champion for getting what's best for Zan. It was also interesting to follow the relationship dynamics between Ben and both his parents. His dad tends to be jerkish and cold, but his mother is kind and gentle with both Ben and Zan, to the best of her ability.

I thought the whole Project Jennifer sideplot was hilarious. Ben has this huge crush on Jennifer, the daughter of his dad's boss, and so (in true scientist fashion) keeps a notebook he labels "Project Jennifer" and takes notes on her likes, dislikes, things he might say to her, etc.

I couldn't figure out it was taking place in the 1970s right away. It took me until after the first CD (or somewhere around there) to figure it out, from some sort of reference to the time. The beginning would have made a lot more sense to me had I known this from the start, since I was bothered by the fact that Ben's parents were just given a chimp like they were. I felt like no one thought about the potential dangers Zan would pose to his caretakers once he wasn't a baby anymore.

As for the audio, it wasn't that great. I felt like it was sloppily produced. It was clear at points that the actor had stopped recording one part and continued later, with a distinct vocal difference. At times it sounded like a different person talking, the difference was so pronounced. I didn't think di Tomasso put much emotion into the performance, and it fell flat as a result.

If the premise intrigues you, I would pick up a copy of Half Brother and read it; skip the audio version.

Disclosure: I got the audio version of this from my local library.

Rock the Drop today!

So you all know how I'm studying to be a teen librarian? Well, today is Support Teen Lit Day, a part of National Library Week. And readergirlz is hosting Rock the Drop, a day when all YA lit lovers spread the love! As I love teen lit like it's my job (oh, wait...) I have released two teen books into the wild.

This first book is ttyl by Lauren Myracle, great YA author and often found on top banned books lists! Automatically she is awesome. And this book is the reason she makes it on there, though it is a shame some people are deprived of it. It's written all in IMs, which is really fun, but deals with tough issues and growing up (apparently this is a good reason to ban books). I hope someone finds it who will enjoy it! It's on a bench in the center of Burlington, near the gazebo.

This second one is a mystery, Down the Rabbit Hole by Peter Abrahams. I left this one in True North Cafe on Cambridge St. I hope someone who will appreciate it finds it!

Go ahead, world, spread the YA love today! Even if it's just reading a YA book or talking about them. Teen Lit Power!

Review: "Shine" by Lauren Myracle

Title: Shine
Author: Lauren Myracle
Publisher: Abrams, 2011

Note: This title will be released May 1, 2011. That said, I've seen it for sale in stores, so who knows.

Cat hasn't spoken to her once best friend, Patrick, in years, ever since an incident that caused her to stop talking to pretty much everyone. But when Patrick, who has not made any efforts to hide his homosexuality in their small Appalachian town, is the victim of a brutal hate crime, Cat thinks she knows who did it. She also knows justice won't be served in Black Creek, and resolves to find the perpetrator at any cost. But as she digs, she's learning much more about her community and the people in it than she thought she would, in addition to having to revisit and start resolving what happened to her three years earlier.

Not for the faint of heart, Myracle gives us a true-to-life and bluntly honest look at life in rural Appalachia. Cat's town of Black Creek is a place of addiction, alcoholism, school drop-outs, and poverty. It's also a place of secrets, ones that most of the people in the small town want kept secret. The characters mostly want to sweep the unseemly parts of their lives swept under the proverbial rug, unless it's really juicy gossip they can share at church. But for those involved or affected, they usually just look the other way.

Cat has looked the other way for too long. After a sexual assault, which two members of her family witnessed and said nothing about, she has learned to block out the rest of the world. But as she tries to help a comatose Patrick, she begins to gain confidence and becomes what one character calls "fierce"—a term she is surprised to find she not only likes, but agrees with.

I loved how Myracle slowly reveals what happened in Cat's past and what is going on in Black Creek. Suspense is ever present, and once the momentum gets going, boy, does it really get going. Twists and turns are everywhere, and I was honestly surprised at how things progressed, though I did guess what happened a while before Cat did.

The foreshadowing is incredibly subtle, and I wondered at some points if it was too subtle, if certain character traits or plot points were so understated that they were underdeveloped. In the end I think they were realistic, making for a more believable story.

Myracle's writing is, as I said earlier, blunt. She does not shy away from domestic abuse, drug addiction, bullying, intolerance, or the results of a severe beating. Her vivid descriptions provide a clear setting and atmosphere for the story being told. She also writes in the vernacular, adding to the authenticity of the story.

The LGBTQ themes in the text are relevant and topical, providing readers with a look at how ugly intolerance and gay bashing can be, especially in a small town.

This is a great page-turner, full of suspense and mystery. Yet it is also a well-done portrait of a poor Appalachian town and community, burdened by deeply buried secrets and the fierce desire to keep them hidden.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this e-book from NetGalley.

Rock the Drop!

So, remember how I told you about National Library Week? Well, YA lovers, rejoice, because Thursday, April 14 is Support Teen Lit Day! And the awesome readergirlz are hosting Rock the Drop, an initiative designed to help readers of teen lit spread the love.

Basically, on April 14, the idea is to take any YA book, put one of the nifty bookplates (available for download at the readergirlz site, linked above) inside, and let it loose into the wild. Leave it on a bench, at the mall, wherever, and hope whoever finds it will love and appreciate it as much as you. They're also encouraging everyone who does this to take a photo and send it to them (e-mail available on their post).

Oh, and did I mention that people who send in a picture will be entered into a drawing for the entire Ruby Oliver series by E. Lockhart? If that's not incentive, I don't know what is.

Spread the love, people!

National Library Week!

Hooray for libraries! Free access for all!

So today kicks off National Library Week, which provides us all with a chance to take a moment and think about how awesome libraries are. I mean, free book rentals! It's like Netflix, but for books and free. And okay, you have to go pick them up. But still. FREE.

Not to mention all the things libraries provide for the community. Internet access for those who don't have computers, CDs, DVDs, audiobooks, magazines, a place to go to just sit and read for hours. Databases, if you're a student or a researcher. Historical documents if you live in a town with the means to keep them. A meeting place for clubs, groups and just a few friends who like to quilt and chat (yes, we have that group in Lexington). They're community centers and champions of the right of each individual to have free access to materials they might not be able to otherwise.

Right now I'm reading a lovely book about librarians and libraries, and how now more than ever we are needed in this Google-crazed world. It's called This Book Is Overdue! and it's by Marilyn Johnson, who, by the way, is not a librarian. And just look at this picture!

Superlibrarian to the rescue!

Anyway, I just wanted to bring attention to the fact that this is being celebrated this week. For a much better and funnier post about National Library Week and some cool facts about libraries check out my friend Nicole's post over at her blog, The Librarian in the Cupboard.

Review: "Paper Towns" by John Green

Title: Paper Towns
Author: John Green
Publisher: Dutton Books, 2008

Margo Roth Spiegelman is a legend. She has led mass TP-ing efforts; has gone to Mississippi for days with the only clue being the four letters M-I-S-P she left in her alphabet soup; has broken into many of the theme parks around her subdivision in Orlando, Florida. Quentin, known as Q, has loved her for pretty much his whole life. And so when she comes to his window around midnight with the proposal of helping her with a revenge-seeking mission, he only hesitates for a moment before agreeing. What follows is an incredibly awesome night.

But the next day, Margo isn't at school. After a few days it becomes clear that this isn't like when she ran off before. And then Q starts to find the clues. With his friends Ben and Radar, and the indispensable online user-generated encyclopedia Omnictionary, Q begins to piece it all together. But the closer he gets to an answer, the more nervous he gets. Where is Margo? And will he want to find her?

Let me just start out by saying John Green is one of the greatest teen writers of all time. I love him and the craziness he comes up with in his books. All of Margo's pranks? Pure genius. Not to mention the easily grasped philosophical musings Q has in his internal monologues. There's a lot of deep thinking going on here, and this in turn makes the reader consider his or her own life and the way they live it. In particular, how we all imagine others to be what we expect them to be without ever really getting to know them. Green keeps coming back to this over and over in the book, in a bunch of different ways.

Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" is a key part of the story and Margo's clues. Not only does he use it in a clever and incredibly useful way for the plot, he also does a lot of analysis with it that readers can actually begin to understand what Whitman is talking about (and believe me, that poem is not easy). How many readers went out and read some Whitman after reading Paper Towns? I know the answer is at least two—I did, and so did one of the (12-year-old!) girls in my teen reading group. This is awesome; I mean really, how many authors can get teens interested in American poets like Whitman? I feel like I'm a better person for it, and I actually learned something about poetry (sidenote: hooray National Poetry Month!).

The characters are so much fun. Ben is absolutely hilarious and completely over the top in pretty much everything, and Radar is a nerd-tastic Omnictionary-obsessed dude whose parents own "the world's largest collection of black Santas." No joke. Q is also very likable, but unfortunately his personality kind of pales in comparison to his even more eccentric friends. That said, their friendship might be the best part of the book in my opinion. The dynamics of their interactions and snappy dialogue make me all smiles—I certainly laughed out loud at parts (in public, I might add). I was glad to see so much of them in the story.

My only complaint is that, despite all his philosophizing, I feel like I didn't really get to know Q, or rather he lacked personality. At times it almost felt like Green was using him as a mouthpiece for his (admittedly outstanding) ideas. But this complaint is not enough to make me like this book less than I do.

About a year ago, I listened to this on audio, and I have to say the narrator, Dan John Miller, was ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC. All of his voices were different for each character, and his characterizations were superb. I would absolutely listen to this again.

Disclosure: I bought this book from Amazon.com for my personal library.

Review: "Jane Austen: A Life Revealed" by Catherine Reef

Title: Jane Austen: A Life Revealed
Author: Catherine Reef
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011

This title will be published on April 18, 2011.


Jane Austen is a part of literary history, with classic novels such as Pride and Prejudice and Emma finding their way not only into the classrooms, but into the hearts and minds of countless fans throughout the world. Her novels are not just romances—they describe everyday life for middle- and upper-class members of rigid English society during the Georgian period, the time in which she lived (around the turn of the 18th century). But not much is known about the woman behind these stories. In this compact biography, Catherine Reef gives us some insight into the life of this elusive literary figure.

Reef tells Austen's story chronologically, starting with her birth and ending with her posthumous novels and her legacy. We are given what facts are known to the world through the letters and diaries of Austen's family and through Austen's own letters, of which only a fraction survived after her death—her sister (and closest companion) Cassandra, for some unknown reason, decided to destroy most of them. Austen is given character, personality and ambition.

I especially liked how we learned of each of Austen's family members and their personalities. I had forgotten how many siblings she had, and I had never known anything about them, aside from Cassandra.

I also enjoyed the overviews of each of her novels, though if you haven't read them and don't want spoilers, I'd skip the synopses. Reef goes into the history behind each novel, and speculates about Austen's reasons for writing the stories as she did, though Reef makes it clear these are speculations. The author never assumes what Austen was thinking when she wrote certain things without some sort of proof from Austen's own life.

Not only do we learn about the famous authoress, we are given a context to Austen's world. Reef shows us each story as Austen's contemporaries and peers would have seen them. Words are defined according to Georgian standards, and the culture is explained thoroughly enough to give readers an idea of the kind of world Austen was writing about (and that she was writing in). A bibliography in the back provides further reading and shows the sources Reef consulted while researching Austen's life.

Images—including illustrations, movie stills (yes, including Clueless), and letters—are sprinkled throughout the pages with informative captions. The images certainly added to the text, both in understanding of the era and in sparking interest in Austen's works (even if it is in just the movies her books inspired). Plus who doesn't want to see a little Matthew Macfadyen as Darcy? I know I wasn't complaining.

This is a perfect introduction to Jane Austen and her time, and gives a great context for her novels. It would make a good addition to any course about Jane Austen, and would especially be useful for teens who are either learning about Austen in school or who just like her books. Short, simple and to the point, yet with all the information you need.

Disclosure: I received an e-copy of this book from NetGalley.