Black Heart review

Black Heart
by Holly Black
Margaret K. McElderry
April 2012

First line: "My brother Barron sits next to me, sucking the last dregs of milk tea slush noisily through a wide yellow straw."

The ending of this epic series was truly amazing! Gifted teen shapeshifter Cassel Sharpe is once again, torn between doing the right thing, or siding with his decidedly shady magically-gifted criminal family. In Black Heart, Cassel has gained fairly good control over his transformation magic but spends a lot of time stressing out over his work as a double-agent. 

His long-time unrequited love, Lila, has officially joined the magical mafia (with the tattoos to prove it) and in the meantime, he's been offered a very sweet deal with a witness protection program - provided he can deliver a couple of big-time mafiosi hold-outs to justice. Conspiracies and backstabbing abound as criminals and politicians vie for control over the "curseworkers" - the small segment of the population with magical ability who are hated and distrusted by everyone.

I love how Cassel really comes into his own in this book. One of the things he says is, "Now I know why people are afraid of transformation workers. Now I know why they want to control me. Now I get it. I can walk into someone's house, kiss their wife, and eat their dinner. I can lift a passport at the airport and twenty minutes later it will seem like it's mine. I can be a blackbird staring in a window. I can be a cat creeping along a ledge. I can do anywhere I want and do the worst things I can imagine, with nothing ever to connect me to those crimes. Today I might look like me, but tomorrow I could look like you. Tomorrow, I could be you. Hell, I'm scared of myself right now."

I can't quite decide if this is a "good guys don't always finish last" or an instance where the bad guys win, or a bit of both, since Cassel has always been this fish out of water in his criminal family. I don't want to spoil anything, but I can say, after having been through so much, Cassel finally does get a much deserved respite.

Compare to:
Thirsty - M.T. Anderson
Eighth Grade Bites - Heather Brewer
The Replacement - Brenna Yovanoff
The Wizard Heir - Cinda Williams Chima


I borrowed this book from the library.

398.2 Necklace

I love this necklace from Etsy seller MoonGardenDesigns. I get the joke - do you?

Abby and the Book Bunch review

Abby and the Book Bunch: Out to Lunch, The Mystery of the Golden Key & Claim to Fame
by Nancy K. Wallace
Calico Chapter Books
January 2013

The busy lives of Abby, her friends, family and neighbors in the idyllic suburban community of Evergreen are the focus in this series of early chapter books. 

In Out to Lunch, Abby, her best friend Sydney and neighborhood boys Zachary and Dakota team up for a medieval project at school, creating knight and princess costumes with the help of their glitter-addicted librarian Mrs. Mackenzie. In The Mystery of the Golden Key, Abby discovers a beautiful key buried in her backyard, and after doing some research at the library, befriends the original owner of the key, Abigail Flynn, a 100-year-old nursing home resident. In Claim to Fame, Sydney is mortified when the boys play a trick on her, turning her blonde hair pink by sprinkling strawberry Kool-Aid on her while she’s at the pool.  In the meantime, Abby’s nervousness over learning her lines for a play they are putting on at the library inspires her to change the show into a very successful puppet show. 

The series would benefit from clearer labeling as to the series order. Other titles in the series are listed alphabetically on the back cover and nothing on the spine or frontspiece indicates what order the books should be read in. Generously sized font, short chapters and a good number of greyscale digital cartoon illustrations make these a fast and fun read for young readers. Each book is appended with activity suggestions to extend some of the ideas presented in each title.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
This review originally appeared in School Library Journal.

Of Poseidon review

Of Poseidon

by Anna Banks

Fiewel and Friends

May 2012

First line: "I smack into him as if shoved from behind."

I'm not ashamed to admit that I picked up this book based on the gorgeous cover alone. Bonus: I love books that alternate between two main characters POV. Of Poseidon was a fun read - if you enjoy the schadenfreude of yelling at characters who are Too Dumb to Live. Clumsy Emma and her best friend Chloe are enjoying a vacation on the Florida beach before they go off to the college in the fall. Things quickly take a serious turn when Chloe is eaten by sharks. Emma is very dramatically super sad that her token black friend is dead. In the meantime hunky stranger Galen is hiding a secret - he's actually a merman. He's actually a royal alpha-male merman, or Syrena as they're called, who is immediately smitten with Emma. He decides to behave like a creepy stalker and chase Emma around, moving to New Jersey so he can keep tabs on her. It's explained to the reader that this is okay, because Galen's culture is male-dominated. Galen's feisty sister Rayna is given away in marriage to Galen's friend Toraf without her consent, and everyone seems right on board for that.

Galen and Emma are Meant to Be Together - Emma's unusual violet eyes give away her half Syrena heritage, and Galen hopes that she can unite the warring Poseidon and Triton tribes. Galen's main obstacle is that he feels Emma rightfully "belongs" to his older brother Grom. Emma has all the hallmarks of a Mary Sue - gorgeous, klutzy, unusual eyes, special powers, (like Aquaman, she can talk to fish) she's as dumb as a box of rocks, yet everyone is smitten with her.

Later in the book, Emma and Galen hit a rough patch and break up. Emma is on a date with nice guy Mark, and Galen shows up and angrily demands that she get out of Mark's car and come with him instead. I was shouting out loud, "No, Emma, no! Don't go with him! So what if he's got great pecs? He's a total weirdo, and threatening other guys you spend time with is such a red flag! Don't do it!" On more than one occasion she even describes Galen as having such an intense stare that he has "serial killer eyes." Of course, Emma decides that she must go with him, in order to protect Mark from getting beat up, since a mere human would not be able to stand up to Galen's superhuman super-strength. Then Galen refuses to drive her home, instead, pulling over on an abandoned stretch of road and guilting her into taking him back. Gross!

File this book under, "so terrible that it's great." Read if you're looking for a light summer read and you're not worried about killing too many brain cells. I kind of split the difference on the read-alikes I recommended: two mermaid books that I think are way better than this one, and two paranormal romances with inappropriately domineering boyfriends (that we are for some reason, supposed to like.)

Compare to:
Lost Voices - Sarah Porter
Lies Beneath - Anne Greenwood Brown
Twilight - Stephenie Meyer
The Mephisto Covenant - Trinity Faegen

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Litograph T-shirts

I've posted before about amazing posters made up of the entire text of a book.
Now there are t-shirts using the same concept. Hurrah!

Picture book mini-reviews 33

Polar Bear Morning
by Lauren Thompson
Scholastic Press
January 2013

Two polar bear cubs explore the arctic, finding seals, seagulls and icebergs. Simple text (just a sentence per page) and large, bold shapes in linocut illustrations make this a good choice for very young audiences. Polar Bear Morning is the perfect example of "less is more." This is a nice companion to Polar Bear Night.

I borrowed this book from the library.

The Ant and the Grasshopper
by Rebecca Emberley, illustrated by Ed Emberley
Roaring Brook Press
October 2012

Caveat emptor! This is not the Aesop's fable. Vibrant, eye-spinning illustrations with clashing colors and Cajun slang celebrate New Orleans music. The lesson seems to be "Laissez les bon temps rouler!" or "Let the good times roll!" which is rather the opposite of the moral from the original fable about virtues of hard work and planning for the future. File this alongside gutless re-tellings of The Little Red Hen with new endings where she decides to share her hard-won bread, despite the laziness of her friends. Some readers may appreciate the wildly colorful, deeply saturated collage illustrations, but I found them stomach churning.

I borrowed this book from the library.

999 Frogs Wake Up
by Ken Kimura
NorthSouth Books
January 2013

What a great spring story. 998 frogs (plus their big brother) decide wake everybody up for spring. When they accidentally wake up a hungry snake they assure him that he can sleep a little later if he likes. Cute, "kawai" illustrations with lots of white space retain a very Japanese feel from this import. This is a sequel to 999 Tadpoles.

I borrowed this book from the library.

Red Hat
by Lita Judge
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
March 2013

With one exclamation per page, a bear and his forest animal friends "Wow-za" "Shwooop" and "Doot-do-doo" through the onomatopoeic story, going on a wild adventure with a knitted red hat they find out on a clothesline. Unraveling their way through the forest, the boy finally gets his tangled yarn back and he re-knits it into little hats for everyone. This is a sequel to Red Sled.

I borrowed this book from the library.

Last Apprentice trailer

Here's the first trailer for Seventh Son - based on Joseph Delaney's The Last Apprentice book series. I don't know how much of the plot it conveys, other than "here's an awesome magical world of magical magic and big battles, woooh!" Still! It looks intriguing.