Mini Reviews: The "I'm Just Trying to Find My Place in the World" Edition

Where I Belong

by Gillian Cross

In the hot desert of Somalia, Mahmoud is kidnapped and held for a ten thousand-dollar ransom. His older sister, Khadija, is in London, thousands of miles away; and yet Mahmoud s life is in her hands. Someone has discovered her identity, that she is Qarsoon the Hidden One the face of famous fashion designer Sandy Dexter s newest collection. Who can Khadija trust to help her? She now must appear as planned on the Fashion Week runway. Only then can she possibly earn the money to save Mahmoud s life. Also involved is Abdi, a fourteen-year-old boy coming to terms with the mysterious disappearance of his father, and Freya, the totally unfashionable daughter of Sandy Dexter, trying to find her place in her mother s world of haute couture. (description from Amazon.com)

I thought that this was an interesting way to introduce a lot of information about Somalian culture. The kids each brought a totally different viewpoint to the story and it was intriguing to read how they interacted with each other and the adults around them.  I had trouble sometimes keeping track of who was the narrator of the different chapters, though, and while this was a sometimes exciting story that was easy to read, it didn't totally enthrall me. 

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Tall Story

by Candy Gourlay

Andi is short. And she has lots of wishes. She wishes she could play on the school basketball team, she wishes for her own bedroom, but most of all she wishes that her long-lost half-brother, Bernardo, could come and live in London where he belongs.

Then Andi's biggest wish comes true and she's minutes away from becoming someone's little sister. As she waits anxiously for Bernardo to arrive from the Philippines, she hopes he'll turn out to be tall and just as crazy as she is about basketball. When he finally arrives, he's tall all right. Eight feet tall, in fact—plagued by condition called Gigantism and troubled by secrets that he believes led to his phenomenal growth. (description from Amazon.com)


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I hadn't been sure I would like this story, but it was actually a very touching, almost folk-story feeling tale. I loved both Bernardo and Andi in different ways.  He was a wonderful boy, who just happened to grow 8 feet tall, and had to deal with how that affected how all the people around him viewed him.  Andi was fiesty, loyal, and incredibly impatient to be independent...and yet, she loved her brother without reservation.  With a slight touch of "magic" and a great, loving family, this turned out to be a great read!

PS - The audio version is phenomenally done. A fun one to listen to!

Full disclosure: Audio book received to review for SLJ
*2012 Debut Author Challenge title*

The Mostly True Story of Jack

by Kelly Barnhill

Enter a world where magic bubbles just below the surface. . . .
When Jack is sent to Hazelwood, Iowa, to live with his strange aunt and uncle, he expects a summer of boredom. Little does he know that the people of Hazelwood have been waiting for him for quite a long time.

When he arrives, three astonishing things happen: First, he makes friends -- not imaginary friends but actual friends. Second, he is beaten up by the town bully; the bullies at home always ignored him. Third, the richest man in town begins to plot Jack's imminent, and hopefully painful, demise. It's up to Jack to figure out why suddenly everyone cares so much about him. Back home he was practically, well, invisible. (description from Amazon.com)

This was a magical tale. It was that side of magic that turns out to be creepy.  I felt bad for Jack as he was trying to figure out who and possibly what he was...and yet, he was good and he made new, loyal friends. I liked the style of this book a lot, and will be checking out Barnhill's next book.

 



Luminous

Luminous
by Dawn Metcalf

As reality slips and time stands still, Consuela finds herself thrust into the world of the Flow. Removed from all she loves into this shifting world overlapping our own, Consuela quickly discovers she has the power to step out of her earthly skin and cloak herself in new ones-skins made from the world around her, crafted from water, fire, air. She is joined by other teens with extraordinary abilities, bound together to safeguard a world they can affect, but where they no longer belong.

When murder threatens to undo the Flow, the Watcher charges Consuela and elusive, attractive V to stop the killer. But the psychopath who threatens her new world may also hold the only key to Consuela's way home. (description from Amazon.com)

This book has a super intriguing premise. Consuela, never really happy in her own skin, finds that she is able to slip out of her own skin and create others from organic materials, like fire, air, or even butterflies. The moments she feels most powerful, though, are when she is skinless...just bone, hence she becomes known as "Bones" in the Flow.

Metcalf has constructed a really cool and interesting place known as the Flow. It is between this life and the next. It is malleable. It is different for everyone. Following Bones through her journeys in this place (places?) were some of the best scenes in the book. Not only was it somewhat like the movie What Dreams May Come with really different dreamscapes to imagine, but it was really conceptual in that each place really meant something specific to the person that it was created for...and therefore in their relationship to Bones.

Each character was very interesting and different in this book. They were all teens brought to the Flow to help save others that might die before their time, but the ones that they connected to and the method that they used to save their lives all varied greatly. Each was really a character study and they played well off of each other.

When I finished this book, I found myself really happy with the story and where Bones/Consuela leaves off in her journey. I also realized that I had thought quite a lot while I was reading. It was sort of a subconscious philosophical journey...and I really like books like that. So, kudos to Dawn Metcalf for an excellent debut!

Full disclosure: ARC received to review for SLJ
2011 Debut Author Challenge title
2011 Shifter Challenge title

The Unidentified

The Unidentified
by Rae Mariz

In a startlingly possible dystopian society, the school system has failed to the point that the government gave over control of national education to corporations. These conglomerates have banded together to create what are known as "Game Centers." Here students like Katey Dade, or Kid, go to "school" daily in refurbished shopping malls. They swipe cards to get in and out, they carry issued cell phones with GPS trackers, they post continuously to profile pages and status feeds (eerily similar to Facebook and Twitter), while administrators and corporate officials monitor their every move. Students who acheive the highest scores in games, set the coolest fashion trends, and gain the utmost popularity are "Branded," instantly becoming infamous nationwide and assisting the corporations to plug their wares.

Kid coasts, never looking to become "Branded," until one day through her drawing attention to a malicious seeming prank, Kid is taken up by not just one corporate sponsor, but two, as a "trendspotter" instead of a trendsetter. As she tries to balance new expectations suddenly placed on her life with betrayals by lifelong friends and new relationships, including a potential new boyfriend, Kid also begins to question the structure around her. Drawn to the prank pulling group calling themselves "The Unidentified," Kid longs for her previous anonymity and blissful ignorance of the shady dealings all around her.

Fans of The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner will enjoy this new dystopian society. It was actually somewhat scary to imagine our education system converting to something like this, yet it wasn't inconceivable. The fact that corporations run so much in our lives already made this scenario feel ridiculously possible.

Kid felt very "real" to me. She wants to date the cute guy, hang out with her friends, and have fun. She doesn't, however, want to be the next "it" girl, and that's where everything starts to go wrong for her. Her friends were also very realistic characters with flaws that made them seem exactly like today's high school students, just in a really cool new type of school.

Since it's very easy to inadvertently give spoilers in this type of book I will just say that this book made me think, creeped me out a little because it felt possible, and left me filled with hope in the end. A very good read!

Full disclosure: ARC received to review for School Library Journal.

Everwild

Everwild
by Neal Shusterman

The Skinjacker Trilogy: Book 2

There was the rumor of a beautiful sky witch, who soared across the heavens in a great silver balloon. And there were whispers of a terrible ogre made entirely of chocolate, who lured unsuspecting souls with that rich promising smell, only to cast them down a bottomless pit from which there was no return.

Everlost, the limbo land of dead children, is at war. Nick the "Chocolate Ogre" wants to help the children of Everlost reach the light at the end of the tunnel. Mary Hightower, self-proclaimed queen of lost children and dangerous fanatic, is determined to keep Everlost's children trapped within its limbo for all eternity. Traveling in the memory of the Hindenburg, Mary is spreading her propaganda and attracting Afterlights to her cause at a frightening speed.

Meanwhile, Allie the Outcast travels home to seek out her parents, along with Mikey, who was once the terrifying monster the McGill. Allie is tempted by the seductive thrill of skinjacking the living, until she learns a shocking secret: Those who skinjack are not actually dead.

It had been awhile since I read Everlost, which came out in 2006, so at first I had a little trouble remembering what had transpired in the first book. Once I sorted things out mentally, though, this book sucked me right in and blew me away! Shusterman is a master at creating a new world with its own distinct rules and mores. Each character grows in interesting and revealing ways. Mary Hightower's progression into a dangerous fanatic was especially disturbing and compelling to read! There are so many revelations and twists in this book, it's incredible that it still flows in a distinct storyline. When I finished this book, I literally had to pause to catch my breath and now I am upset that the final book in the trilogy is not yet published.

Highly recommended!