Category Archives: By Age Range

Review: On a Clear Day by Walter Dean Myers

Book Review and Content, Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , ,

On a Clear Day by Walter Dean MyersOn a Clear Day
Walter Dean Myers
Crown Books for Young Readers
Published: September 23, 2014

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Since her mother’s death, Dahlia has simply survived. On her own in a rundown apartment, she waits for a way to make her life mean more. Then two boys offer her a chance to make a difference. She joins other teen prodigies in brainstorming a strategy to take down C-8, a group of corporations that have the world in a stranglehold. But just as Dahlia and her team stumble onto something big, a big-shot terrorist comes to town. The team knows he must be stopped, but taking him on might simply be playing into the bigger plans of C-8.

I requested an ARC for this book via NetGalley but didn’t get it. Based on the description posted there and on Goodreads, I thought this story would be more like X-Men teens meets The Net (1995, Sandra Bullock, etc.) Now that I’ve read the story, I get where the blurb was going, but I’m not sure it’s the best representation of the tale itself. I wonder if revealing the fact that the narrator is a girl was thought to be off-putting to potential male readership? Pure speculation.

What I liked about the story was that it pulled a lot of different elements together. The cast of characters shows a lot of racial diversity and delivers it with authenticity. In the same way, the team Dahlia joins also shows a lot of intellectual diversity, showcasing different areas of expertise and how they bring a unique perspective to each problem the group faces. To me this also echoed the same message of value and equality about the characters’ ethnic backgrounds: we all bring value. We may not agree on things, but in order to succeed at saving the world, we have to work together and trust each other.

I expected a lot of fast-paced action and suspense, and there was definitely tension building as the story unfolded, but this is more about unique teens dialoguing together over a plan to stop the bad guys from running the show. They do make progress, but not in the ways they necessarily expected, and ultimately, they don’t accomplish their goal. I think I would have liked this book more if there had been a stronger forward push carrying the story along. The group assembles with a vague goal in mind, which keeps things a bit wishy-washy until well into the tale.

This is the first book by Myers that I’ve read, and most of the reviews I skimmed through recommend his other books over this one. Monster has been on my list for a long time, so it’s possible I’ll give that one a read and reevaluate this story again.

Language Content
Strong profanity used with moderate frequency.

Sexual Content
One reference to a man putting his hand between a waitress’s legs. It’s inappropriate and another man calls him out for it.

Spiritual Content
A priest oversees a funeral. Hard times have fallen on humanity and many have died from lost hope. Dahlia makes a comment about having craved her own death before out of a simple desire to “move to the next plane” of existence.

Violence
Groups of vigilantes and terrorists wreak havoc on the population. Dahlia’s team goes head to head with a terrorist group, exchanging fire with them. Resulting deaths and injuries are briefly described. Some soldiers are children. In one instance, a boy is caught in razor wire. Dahlia and her friends watch helplessly as the wire kills him.

Drug Content
A girl in her early twenties drinks a glass of white wine at a café. At a meeting with gang leaders, someone passes marijuana to Dahlia, who refuses to smoke it. Then a woman uses a needle to inject drugs in front of Dahlia.

Review: The Raft by S. A. Bodeen

Book Review and Content, Clean Fiction, Contemporary, Middle Grade 8-12, , , , ,

The Raft by S. A. Bodeen
Feiwel & Friends

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When a frightening experience turns fifteen year-old Robie’s unsupervised Hawaii vacation into a nightmare, she boards a plane for home on the Midway Atoll, a group of Pacific islands. In the chaos before the flight, Robie’s name wasn’t entered in the manifest. So when the plane goes down over the vast Pacific Ocean, no one knows to look for her.

Stranded on a tiny raft with Max, an unconscious pilot, Robie’s chances of survival are slim. They have no water and only a small bag of skittles to eat as they drift on the open sea waiting for rescue. An uninhabited island might allow refuge from the sharks, but with little understanding of wilderness survival, Robie has little hope of living there long. It will take all her wits and courage to find rescue.

As I started reading this book, I worried about two things happening: one, Robie and the pilot, a young man in his mid-twenties forming a romantic relationship, or two, the pilot basically taking charge and making all the decisions and telling Robie what to do so that she becomes more of a passive character in her own story. Thankfully, neither of these things happened. Max’s injuries make him unable to help her very much throughout the story. Though his character serves an important role, he doesn’t dominate the tale, and Robie is clearly the hero.

The writing was solid but a little bit flat, for me. I had a hard time pinpointing what wasn’t working, but I think it was that some of the intense scenes, like the crash, were so brief that I didn’t really have time to emerge myself in them and react. The narrative worked because Robie was in shock, but I think I would have gotten into the story more with more detail in those moments. Over all it was good. I’d recommend for maybe fifth through seventh graders.

Language Content
No profanity. A few instances of brief crude language.

Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
A man on the street grabs Robie, but she escapes. A violent storm causes her plane to crash. She and an injured man survive on a life raft. The crash doesn’t have a whole lot of scary details. It’s straightforward but pretty brief.

Drug Content
References to a drunk driving accident that killed a teenage girl.

Review: The Firebug of Balrog County by David Oppegaard

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , ,

The Firebug of Balrog County by David Oppegaard
Flux Books
Published: September 8, 2015

Since his mother’s death, the firebug has come to live inside Mack. He knows it’s wrong, but when the bug gets an itch, he can’t ignore the urge to burn something. Then he meets a girl battling her own darkness. Her admiration only fuels his pyromania, and when his grandfather, the town mayor, sets out to stop the anonymous firebug, Mack knows his adventure must come to an end. As the firebug gets harder and harder to deny, he can only hope he won’t end up watching his whole future go up in flames.

Normally this sort of dark, angsty story packed with wry witty humor would be exactly my cup of tea. I’m not sure if it was Mack’s deep anger or his flip attitude that put me off, but I found it really hard to connect with him. About halfway through the story, once it’s clear how much he loves his sister and loved his mom, he started to win me over. What remained a hurdle was the sheer amount of swearing and crudity. I read a lot of books that have profanity in them, and it usually doesn’t bother me. The quantity of profanity in this book really felt gratuitous. I wished more than once that Mack’s mother HAD been around to wash his mouth out with soap, or that his father would man up and attempt it himself.

Despite those issues, I thought the plot was tight. I figured there were a couple of ways I could see the story resolving (both pretty cliché), and the real ending totally came out of left field but made perfect sense. Overall I’d say it was okay, but I would probably not read it again.

Language Content
Extreme profanity and crude language used frequently.

Sexual Content
Mack rides around in a car with a girl and has an erection. His description of how this could become a problem if she notices, etc, is a bit comical. Mack has sex with a girl a couple of times – the act itself isn’t described. The girl denies him any sort of relationship commitment.

Spiritual Content
Since his mom’s illness and death, Mack has some pretty deep (and understandable) anger toward God. At one point late in his mother’s illness, he was desperate enough to pray to God for healing for her. But she died soon after, and he remains convinced his pleas were unheard or ignored.

Violence
There are some references to hunting. Mack and his grandfather go bow hunting. A boy is nearly shot with arrows from a hunting bow. A deer runs in front of the car, causing an accident, but no one is injured.

Drug Content
Mack drinks alcohol with his father’s knowledge and consent, despite the fact that he’s underage. He also works at a local bar on Friday and Saturday nights.

Review: I Crawl Through It by A. S. King

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Magical Realism, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , ,

I Crawl Through It
by A. S. King
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Four teens battle inner traumas from grief to anxiety to neglect. Stanzi’s parents compulsively visit sites of school shootings. China has eaten herself. Lansdale tells outlandish lies that make her hair grow. Gustav is busy assembling an invisible helicopter from a kit the bush man gave him. The bush man has all the answers. He knows the place Gustav and Stanzi can go, a place that has answers for them, too. Escape seems like the perfect solution, until it isn’t.

Honestly, I so didn’t get this book. I wanted to like it. I liked pieces of it. I think each character individually had a really fascinating story. I just didn’t really understand how they fit together and why they were all stories in the same book. Also, I kept expecting the odd stuff to be revealed as metaphors for something. I thought maybe this layer of fantasy would be pulled back to reveal a layer of reality that made sense beneath it – like Neal Shusterman’s Challenger Deep.

That doesn’t happen, though. The story remains sort of this weird urban Alice in Wonderland, where the lines between reality and I’m not even sure what – fantasy? Hallucination? – blur and loop back on themselves.

The narrative is strong and each character is profoundly unique, so there are some really powerful elements present. But I couldn’t get past feeling left hanging, waiting for things to click into place and make some kind of sense. I felt like I missed the boat somehow.

If you’re looking for an intense emotional read where nothing is predictable and the plot really takes you outside the box, I Crawl Through It will not disappoint. If you need a little more sense and reason in your fiction, it may not be the book for you. Try Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman or We Were Liars by E. Lockhart if you’re looking for something different about mental illness.

Language Content
Extreme profanity used with moderate frequency.

Sexual Content
A man lives in a bush near Stanzi’s house. He wears a trench coat but is naked underneath, and sometimes appears to expose himself. Stanzi kisses him, and there are hints that he may be having sex with some teen girls, but it’s never described. Patricia lives with Gary and he asks her for sex, but she makes excuses.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
This isn’t really violence, but Stanzi is obsessed with biology and dissecting things, especially frogs. She doesn’t harm anything living.

Drug Content
The man who lives in the bush sells lemonade with or without roofies. Stanzi believes this is a joke. It’s never specified.

Review: The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Sci-Fi, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , ,

The Scorpion Rules
by Erin Bow
Margaret K. McElderry/Simon & Schuster

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Most of Greta’s memories are from her time spent at the Precepture as a Child of Peace. Though she’s the crown princess of the Pan-Polar kingdom, she and other child royals live together in the secluded school. If their countries declare war on one another, their lives will be forfeit. For Greta, whose homeland stands on the brink of war, reaching adulthood seems an impossibility.

When a new boy enters the Precepture, he’s bound and determined not to let the system dominate him. Greta’s always been careful to follow the rules, but now she finds herself challenged by Elián’s behavior. As their nations inch ever closer to war, he talks of escaping the compound. Hope and terror battle within Greta, but she may not have time to decide the victor before she’s called upon to fulfill her duty.

Wow. Just wow. I devoured this book, page after page as quickly as I could. When I had to put it down, the story stayed in my head. Each of the characters has this really deep individual personality and each really added something significant to the story. I liked that the AI characters didn’t follow the clichéd norms for speech and behavior. The premise – that AI rule earth from a satellite – is really original, and Bow executes the plot with clockwork precision. As each new conflict tore through the tale, I found myself deeper and deeper invested in the lives of the Children of Peace.

The ending definitely set the stage for a follow-up novel. It was intense without seeming like a cliffhanger for its own sake. The ending resolved the crucial conflict but definitely left plenty of things unresolved for the next tale.

If you’re looking for a book that has a diverse, well-drawn set of characters and a strong cerebral feel, this is definitely a book you want to read. Fans of These Broken Stars by Aimee Kaufman and Meagan Spooner or Zeroboxer by Fonda Lee should add this novel to their to-be-read lists.

Language Content
Extreme profanity used very infrequently.

Sexual Content
References to sneaking out at night to have sex, called “going coyote.” A girl confesses that she’d become pregnant and was forced to miscarry. Kissing – girl/girl and boy/girl.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
References to complete cities being obliterated. Greta remembers one of the Children of Peace who committed suicide and briefly describes what happened. (He used a pitchfork. There was a lot of blood.) Robot minders use electric shocks to keep one rowdy kid in line. A drug is used to induce nightmares in other children who won’t behave. A female hostage is queued for torture. It’s intense but doesn’t get super gruesome.

Drug Content
See sexual content and violence.

Review: Battle of Beings by Nita Tarr

Book Review and Content, Christian World-View, Paranormal, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , ,

Battle of Beings by Nita Tarr
CreateSpace

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When Gregory finds himself the winner of a large lottery, he knows there’s only one thing he wants to do with the winnings. He will travel to the Congo to help children. Greg and his two friends make the long journey together, but when they finally reach the mission, something isn’t right. The mission director acts suspiciously, and the children are simply too quiet. Greg and his team need to find out what’s really happening to the children at the mission and rescue them. Greg isn’t acting alone, though. All around and unseen, angels aid his efforts, waging war against a legion of demons who would stop at nothing to destroy every child in the mission.

I liked the way Tarr brought the story into the jungles of Africa. It was a fresh setting that definitely shined through the story. Greg and Jenny were a really cute couple, and some of their antics made me laugh – perhaps even ones that were supposed to be serious, though? I’m not sure.

As for the rhythm of the story itself, I felt like I was reading an early draft. There were characters and scenes that really weren’t well-integrated into the story as a whole. Scenes felt choppy. Characters were, at times, unbelievable. For instance, in one scene an angel character is having a conversation with Jesus and Jesus is clarifying that he indeed made up this word or that idea (all the ideas, because he’s God) and I felt like, the angel has been around for a long time. I couldn’t see him still wondering, hey, did Jesus make that up? Because surely it’s not the first time he’s thought about it after all this time?

On the whole, a lot of the story was interesting. It had a pretty solid plot. The Christian elements are pretty deep, and sometimes written in that sort of church-speak that some readers may find inaccessible. Readers with some familiarity with other novels featuring angels and demons may find this story most interesting and easy to follow.

Language Content
Mild profanity used infrequently.

Sexual Content
A boy grabs a girl’s chest and pressures her for sex. She tells him he’s crazy and begins to pray for him.

Spiritual Content
Angels and demons are characters in the story and behave according to Christian ideas. Jesus makes an appearance, having conversations with angels on top of clouds and later disguising himself as a human and participating in a fighting ring. Demons control humans, causing them to harm one another. Prayer and angelic warfare casts them out and returns the human to his or her normal self.

Violence
A creepy guy wears a necklace with human pinky fingers strung on it. Children are forced to take up guns and participate in an army led by a warped man. Giant spiders attack people in the jungle. Angels use swords to fight demons. Demons use canes and other weapons.

Drug Content
None.