The Horn Book » fiction

Review of Ask the Passengers

Jennifer M. Brabander — Wed, 01 May 2013 14:00:17 +0000

Ask the Passengers
by A. S. King
High School Little, Brown 295 pp.
10/12 978-0-316-19468-6 $17.99
Astrid would be the quintessential Q-for-Questioning girl in her high school’s LGBTQ support group if her small-town, small-minded school had such a thing — and the gay question is only one of many weighing her down. When her humanities teacher explains that learning the Socratic method “will be a time of asking questions and not rushing to answer them…a time of thinking and not knowing,” Astrid muses, “Perfect for me…I am the not knowing queen.” Socrates himself starts making periodic appearances, visible only to Astrid (who calls him Frank). Frequently driven outside by her nuthouse of a family, Astrid reclines on a picnic table and watches airplanes. She sends her questions and her love (because “it feels good to love a thing and not expect anything back”) to the passengers; each time, readers get a glimpse of a passenger’s own struggle with the question Astrid has asked — plus his or her satisfying epiphany, reached after experiencing a sudden sensation of love. As in Printz Honor recipient King’s previous novels, including Everybody Sees the Ants (rev. 1/12), these moments not only add humor to the book’s societal critique but also provide vivid images that heighten the story’s emotion. Astrid ultimately decides not to live a lie, as her closeted best friend Kristina has done for years, but wonders whether she can handle people’s reactions; she can (evident when she introduces girlfriend Dee to her family), and the book ends with Astrid’s skyward message to a young lesbian being flown to “gay conversion camp”: “Stay strong.” It’s a fine conclusion to a furiously smart and funny coming-out-and-of-age novel.

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Eleanor & Park

Katrina Hedeen — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:10:33 +0000

It feels like everyone (the Horn Book included) is talking about Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park (St. Martin’s Griffin, February 2013) — and for good reason. I recently read it when it up was for starring in the May/June issue (it was a shoe-in), and mourned the fact that Rachel Smith and I hadn’t come across it in time for our article “What Makes a Good YA Love Story?” Well, consider it a late addition.

This book is endearing, humorous, believable, sexy, and heart-wrenching, and it embodies nearly all of the qualities we looked for: the characters are crisply realized and wonderfully quirky; their repartee is smart, genuine, and entertaining; their experiences and predicaments are relatable; the vividly alive setting helps us connect with the story; their love for each other develops at an expertly natural pace; and we as readers learn as much about love as Eleanor and Park do.

Ms. Rowell, thank you for underscoring everything Rachel and I learned about what makes a love story great.

Readers, let us know if you feel the same.

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Review of Eleanor & Park

Cynthia K. Ritter — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:00:39 +0000

Eleanor & Park
by Rainbow Rowell
High School    St. Martin’s Griffin    328 pp.
2/13    978-1-250-01257-9    $18.99
e-book ed. 978-1-250-03121-1    $9.99
It’s the start of a new school year in 1986 Omaha when sophomores Eleanor and Park meet for the first time on the bus. They are an unusual pair: she’s the new girl in town, an ostracized, bullied “big girl” with bright red curly hair, freckles, and an odd wardrobe; he’s a skinny half-Korean townie who mostly wears black and tries to stay out of the spotlight. But as they sit together on the school bus every day, an intimacy gradually develops between them. At first they don’t talk; then she reads his comics with him; he makes her mixtapes of his favorite rock bands; they hold hands; and eventually they are looking for ways to spend every waking hour together. Their slowly evolving but intense relationship is chaste first love, authentic in its awkwardness — full of insecurities, miscommunications, and sexual awakenings — and life-changing for them both. When Eleanor’s unstable home life (replete with abusive stepfather) ultimately tears the young lovers apart, the novel ends realistically: uncertain, yet still hopeful. Rowell presents her teen protagonists’ intelligent observations, extreme inner desires, and irrational feelings through compelling alternating narrations. She imbues the novel with rich character development, a spot-on depiction of the 1980s, and powerful descriptive passages (“Holding Eleanor’s hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive”). It’s an honest, heart-wrenching portrayal of imperfect but unforgettable love.

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Review of Poison

Robin Smith — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:30:58 +0000

Poison
by Bridget Zinn
Middle School Hyperion 280 pp.
3/13 978-1-4231-3993-5 $16.99 g
Sixteen-year-old Kyra is a girl with more than her share of secrets. Living in the world of witches, dwarves, potion masters, shape shifters, and the like, she is reluctant to trust anyone, even her best friend and the future queen, Ariana. Readers learn early on that Kyra has attempted to murder Ariana, and we spend the rest of the book trying to figure out why Kyra shot a deadly potion at her…and why, when she has never missed a target, she missed that one. Twists and turns, including dramatic cliffhanger chapter endings, quick getaways, disguises, tricked-out witches, a princess-seeking pig, and one especially clever and handsome boy make this a fine rollicking adventure from start to finish. The author’s use of thoroughly modern language in a magical setting adds to the charm. The characters are complicated and act in flawed human ways, making mistakes in judgment that make the plot twists all the more realistic. Kyra and Ariana are strong girls in the Vesper Holly tradition—not giving in to sexist social requirements and, thank goodness, never fighting over Fred, the love interest. Zinn has crafted a marvelous tale, more Harry Potter than Twilight. Readers will be sad that, due to her untimely death, Zinn’s promising debut novel will be her last.

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Review of Never Say Die

Roger Sutton — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:30:31 +0000

Never Say Die
by Will Hobbs
Intermediate, Middle School    Harper/HarperCollins    212 pp.
2/13    978-0-06-170878-7    $16.99
Library ed. 978-0-06-170879-4    $17.89
e-book ed. 978-0-06-222384-5    $9.99
Set in the Yukon Territory hard by the Beaufort Sea, Hobbs’s latest turbocharged wilderness survival story has heavy weather, savage river waters, treacherous trails, and, as chief antagonist, a “grolar bear.” Just as exciting (and real) as the Turkish war dog of Hobbs’s Go Big or Go Home (rev. 5/08), the polar bear–grizzly hybrid attacks our hero Nick in the first chapter and returns in the last for a spectacular confrontation. In between, Nick and his adult half-brother Ryan travel by bush plane, raft (until it smashes into a wall of ice), and foot through isolated Ivvavik National Park, where photojournalist Ryan is on assignment to document how caribou numbers and migration have been affected by climate change, which has also led to dangerous (and exciting) thunderstorms, floods, and the grolar bear itself, the result of newly overlapping habitats. While you might want half-Inuit Nick, who never met his now-dead white explorer father, and Ryan, product of yet another of the father’s brief relationships, to display some complexity to match their challenging environment, they are mostly there as the reader’s stand-ins, allowing him (or her!) to know what it’s like to face the bear. And the lightning. And the mosquitoes. Hobbs doesn’t resist information-packing (“Nick, have you ever heard the theory that climate change might be a factor in the decline of caribou herds in the Arctic?”), but he’s brisk about it and knows how to get out of the…LOOK OUT!

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Review of Etched in Clay

Dean Schneider — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:08:42 +0000

Etched in Clay:
The Life of Dave, Enslaved Potter and Poet
by Andrea Cheng; illus. by the author
Intermediate, Middle School Lee & Low 143 pp.
1/13 978-1-60060-451-5 $17.95 g
Readers familiar with Laban Carrick Hill and Bryan Collier’s 2011 Caldecott Honor–winning picture book Dave the Potter will appreciate Cheng’s interpretation of the man’s life story. Historical record leaves much unknown about this real person, a slave living in South Carolina who learned how to mold clay and became a fine potter. Through alternating perspectives (Dave; partners in the pottery business; the slave master; a woman who may have been Dave’s wife; children he’s teaching) and in spare free verse, Cheng sets the stage for Dave’s personal stand against injustice. After learning how to read and write, he saw clay as a “wet mound / of potential” and began inscribing small poems in the pottery — at the risk of his life, since it was illegal for slaves to know how to write. This inspirational historical fiction novel in verse portrays one man’s capacity to live a creative life within the confines of slavery, a man who (in Cheng’s words) hoped that “someday the world will read / my word etched in clay / on the side of this jar / and know about the shackles / around our legs / and the whips / upon our backs.” Silhouette-like woodcuts enhance the presentation. A selection of Dave’s writings is appended, and source notes are included.

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Review of Days of Blood & Starlight

Jonathan Hunt — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:30:24 +0000

Days of Blood & Starlight
by Laini Taylor
High School Little, Brown 517 pp.
11/12 978-0-316-13397-5 $18.99
Star-crossed lovers Karou and Akiva, torn apart by unforgivable betrayal at the end of Daughter of Smoke & Bone (rev. 11/11), are now engaged in the renewed war between the chimaera and the seraphim. Both are repulsed by the escalating brutality and the callous disregard for the sanctity of life but feel powerless to effect change. Karou has taken over the position of resurrectionist from her fallen mentor Brimstone, almost singlehandedly repopulating the chimaera army under the direction of Thiago, the ruthless White Wolf. Akiva, believing Karou to be lost to him forever, reluctantly takes a lead role in the fight against the chimaera. As one of the Misbegotten, the emperor’s bastard children bred solely to fight and die, nothing less is expected of him. The first half of the novel is full of rage and anger, carnage and destruction; the second half is dominated by surprises and revelations that ratchet up the suspense and forge an uneasy alliance between the chimaera and the Misbegotten for the battle against the seraphim that looms on the horizon. If Karou’s journey in the first book was characterized by coming of age and falling in love, here it has taken a turn toward personal sacrifice and emerging leadership. The future of Karou, her ill-fated romance with Akiva, and the survival of both of their races await readers in the concluding volume; it promises to be a doozy.

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Review of The Archived

Deirdre Baker — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 16:24:00 +0000

The Archived
by Victoria Schwab
Middle School, High School Hyperion 324 pp.
1/13 978-1-4231-5731-1 $16.99 g
Mackenzie is a “Keeper”; her job is to return the wakeful dead (or “Histories”) to the Archive, a repository of all human memory. Persuading the dead to return to their rightful resting place often involves kick-ass combat, but never so much as when Mac’s family moves to an apartment in an old hotel. Suddenly, the Archive experiences a rush of escaped Histories, and it’s no longer the silent domain it should be — nor is Mac, grieving the loss of her younger brother, as dispassionate as she once was about the dead. This is no common policing-the-supernatural romantic thriller: Schwab’s image of the Archive and  its Librarians is both poignant and intellectually piquant, a suggestion that the repository of human memory goes beyond personal loss and is central to human culture. She writes of death, sorrow, and family love with a light, intelligent touch and inventive vigor, and provides romance with a pleasing edge of unpredictability. It isn’t often that lines from Dante’s Inferno make their way into supernatural thrillers for teens, but they do here — and to good effect.

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David Levithan on Every Day

Christine M. Heppermann — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 17:45:12 +0000

From the November/December 2012 issue of The Horn Book Magazine:

Reviewer Christine Hepperman asks author and editor David Levithan about writing gender (and the lack thereof) in his YA novel Every Day. Read the full review of Every Day here.

Christine Hepperman: Were there specific challenges in writing a character who is both genders and neither?

David Levithan: When you think of a character as purely a voice, purely a self, purely as words, it’s easy to defy gender. I had never noticed before how largely genderless English is, lending itself well to this neutrality. The foreign translations, I imagine, are going to be more of a challenge, since other languages unfortunately gender language much more.

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Review of Every Day

Christine M. Heppermann — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 17:15:06 +0000

Every Day
by David Levithan
Middle School, High School    Knopf    325 pp.
8/12    978-0-307-93188-7    $16.99
Library ed. 978-0-375-97111-2    $19.99
e-book ed. 978-0-307-97563-8    $10.99
“A,” the narrator of Levithan’s brilliantly conceived novel, wakes up in a different sixteen-year-old’s body every morning and has to adjust to different physical characteristics, a different family, a different school, different friends. The process does have certain parameters. For instance, A always wakes up in bodies that match his/her (the protagonist is, in essence, gender neutral) age and never travels far geographically unless the host body does. A realizes that this way of life is unique, but over the years s/he has come to terms with it. “I’m never going to figure it out, any more than a normal person will figure out his or her own existence. After a while, you have to be at peace with the fact that you simply are.” But what happens when A falls in love? Levithan poses this question early in the novel and then shapes the narrative into a profound exploration of what it means to love someone. Before meeting Rhiannon, A responsibly tried not to make waves in his/her hosts’ lives, like a camper who leaves a campsite as clean as it was found. But now s/he “hijacks” bodies, making them drive to meet Rhiannon at parties and coffee shops. In one instance A strands a host, Cinderella-like, by the side of the road at midnight so that the boy awakens in his car, ranting that he was the victim of demonic possession. “I am not the devil,” A thinks. So who is s/he? What is his/her place in the world? Readers will savor every word of A’s attempt to figure that out.

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