Leaving Paradise Left Me Behind

Leaving Paradise by Simone Elkeles has an intriguing premise: a year before the novel begins, Caleb Becker admitted to driving drunk, hitting his neighbor Maggie Armstrong, and then leaving the scene of the crime. Caleb was sentenced to serve a year in the Department of Corrections' juvenile jail, where he lived with gang members, was subjected to full body searches, and spent his time hardening both his body and his mind. The novel begins with Caleb's release from jail, and the reception he receives from his family and from the kids at school. One of the best aspects of the novel is that it is told in alternating chapters, going back and forth between Caleb's and Maggie's perspectives. Maggie has spent the previous year undergoing numerous surgeries and physical therapy to help heal the leg that was ruined by the accident. She is angry that Caleb is released and can go back to what she perceives as his "normal life", while she has been forever damaged by his reckless behavior. Both Caleb's and Maggie's families have been changed by the accident, and both have unreasonable expectations of how their children should act in the accident's aftermath. Caleb's mother wants him to pretend to be a cleancut, preppy kid for the sake of outward appearances, while his sister has become totally goth and largely unrecognizable. The reasons for this are revealed later in the novel. Maggie's mother (her father has left the family and holds Maggie at arm's length) desperately wants her to be happy and to feel like she fits in with the rest of the kids at school, which is far from reality. Maggie and Caleb are forced to confront one another when they begin helping an elderly woman after school, Maggie to make money for a trip to Spain, and Caleb to fulfill his community servicement requirements for parole. They begin to fall in love, but have to keep that love secret because how could anyone possibly understand why Maggie, the victim could forgive Caleb, much less fall in love with him? And how could anyone understand how Caleb can love damaged Maggie, when his ex-girlfriend Kendra is the hottest girl in school?
Leaving Paradise is a gentle romance which many students may enjoy. For me, Elkeles' writing and dialogue fell flat, and her adult characters were way over-the-top caricatures of "out-of-it parents". Also, the ending! What was up with the ending? If you can overlook the abrupt ending and the (IMHO) bad writing, you just may find paradise. 2 out of 4 Bananas.

Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award 2010 Nominee

Love Love Love Love Love LOVE This Book!

If you liked Harry Potter because of J.K. Rowling's creatively imagined world of sorcery, private schools, and hilarious hijinks, then you will LOVE (note the title of this post) I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You by Ally Carter. It's set in a top-secret, all-girls school for spies, where girls from spy families, girls with genius IQs, or girls who have shown a talent for espionage are educated in Covert Operations, hand-to-hand combat, garbology (the study of trash), conversational Swahili and other non-traditional subject areas. As far as the town knows, however, the Gallagher Academy is simply a private school for spoiled rich girls. What happens, then, when Cammie Morgan falls for a cute townie named Josh? She can't let him know that she's a Gallagher Girl (he'll just think she's a stuck-up snob), but she also can't tell him that she's been trained to kill someone with a piece of uncooked spaghetti, because, let's face, that's just a little weird. Cammie's friends are also suspicious that Josh may be a "honeypot" (someone who uses romance to trick an enemy agent), so they convince Cammie to conduct a covert operation to spy on Josh and find out his true motives for dating her. Can she trust him? Should she? What's a spy girl to do in this dangerous day and age?? I LOVED this book because of its fresh and humorous writing style, creativity, and fast pace and unhesitatingly award it 4 out of 4 Bananas!

Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award 2010 Nominee

What is Moral Responsibility?

I read The Reader by German author Bernhard Schlink while I was in Mexico during Spring Break. It's not exactly a vacation read, but I enjoyed it all the same. It's a very different sort of book from what I've been reading lately, which have mostly been mysteries and thrillers (love those!). Since Kate Winslet won an Oscar for her role as Hannah Schmitz in the movie version of The Reader, though, I thought that this novel translated from the German was worth a look. It's the story of Michael Berg, a teenage boy in the years following World War II, who begins an affair with an older woman (Hannah Schmitz, the Kate Winslet role). The affair is very erotic and exciting, but soon begins to have a dark side when Hannah avoids questions about her past and shows some troubling sides to her personality. And then, one day, she is gone. Michael does not see her again for years, after he has been married, had a child, and then divorced. The circumstances in which he sees Hannah again force Michael himself as well as the reader to ask certain moral questions about the nature of responsibility, guilt, redemption and forgiveness. These questions are not easy to answer, particularly when dealing with a subject like the Holocaust, which is the time period after which The Reader takes place. I liked this book and felt that it was an important read because it filled a gap in my own consciousness and provided food for my own thought and personal moral development. It's not a technically difficult book to read, as it is fairly slim and straightforward, but the themes are certainly sophisticated and require a patient, thoughtful mind. 3 1/2 out of 4 Bananas.

Peeps: It's not about delicious marshmallow chickens

If you like all things vampire, or even if you don't, you should read Peeps by Scott Westerfeld. It is a scary, smart, wickedly funny and totally original re-imagining of what makes a vampire a vampire, and, more importantly, why. In Westerfeld's world, a certain parasite exists which invades a victim's body, infests her brain, and creates in her a voracious appetite for meat and blood. It also gives her superhuman strength, sight, and smell. Over the centuries, according to Westerfeld, people infected with the parasite have been called different things: witches, zombies and, of course vampires. All of the odd-numbered chapters tell the story of Cal, a carrier of the vampire parasite. As a carrier, he has superhuman senses and strength, but he does not become a crazed bloodsucker or cannibal like those with the full-blown parasite. He is employed by the top-secret, centuries-old Night Watch, an organization in New York City which hunts down new vampires and keeps tabs on the rat populations (which also carry the parasite). In the course of his work, Cal meets Lace, a cute, straight-talking journalism student who becomes more and more curious about Cal's occupation. The only problem Cal faces getting to know Lace is that he can't EVER be physically intimate with anyone, not even to kiss, because the parasite is transferred by saliva and other bodily fluids. What's a guy to do? Eventually Cal and Lace strike a deal and begin to dig deeper into the increasingly alarming new strain of vampirism that is affecting the city. What they find will shock them to the core. The even-numbered chapters describe various real-life parasites, how they work, how they infect their hosts, and include a multitude of gory details you'll wish you never knew!
I loved this book. I want everyone to read it and then talk to me about it. Westerfeld has a wry, irrererent sense of humor and wickedly twisted imagination. Hands down 4 out of 4 Bananas!

A Northern Light: A Gentle, Inspirational Murder Mystery (Really!)

I just finished Jennifer Donnelly's A Northern Light, which is a Printz medal winner and is also on this year's Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award list. After the Taken debacle (see previous post), I needed to read another Abe Lincoln nominee and have my faith in the list restored. I would describe A Northern Light as Anne of Green Gables meets Little House on the Prairie, set in the Adirondacks, with a murder thrown in to add an air of mystery and to help the main character develop her sense of destiny. It is actually based on a real murder case from the early twentieth century, in which a young woman becomes pregnant and is drowned in a lake by her lover so that she does not get in the way of the life he had hoped to have. Their letters to each other survived, however, and ultimately helped convict him of her murder. A Northern Light is set in the Adirondacks and is the story of Mattie, a teenage girl who hopes to go to college in the city and become an author, until she draws the romantic attention of the handsome son of a wealthy local farmer. She also takes a job at a local resort, where she meets Grace Brown (the woman who is eventually murdered). After the murder, and after Mattie reads the sad letters Grace had written to the man who ultimately kills her, Mattie must decide what direction her own life should take. Should she forego her dreams of independence and education to marry a man who may not love her truly? 3 out of 4 Bananas