MotherReader

I see a decent amount of picture books, and I only review the ones that have garnered a strong reaction from me — either positive or negative. I love to share the funny or lovely books I have run across, and I feel compelled to warn you against the sappy or crappy books I have had to read.

And then there is John Hall’s How to Get a Gorilla Out of Your Bathtub.

I don’t know how I feel about this book. It’s funny... yet, in such a strange way, it’s not grabbing me. And I like strange.

Basically, the girl in the story instructs us the readers as to the techniques for getting a gorilla out of your bathtub. A trail of bananas won’t work, because gorillas like bathtubs better. Wrapping a rope around the gorilla’s tummy will remind him of being tangled in a bowl of spaghetti. What? It just gets more surreal from that point.

When I went to Amazon to see what reviewers thought of this book, there were no professional reviews. Huh. What’s more, of the people who had been to that page only one percent ended up buying that book. One percent. So, it doesn’t seem to be hitting other people as a must-have purchase either.

In summary, kudos to the author for thinking out of the box in children’s picture books. However, I am not sure I am ready for How to Get a Pickle Out of Your Ear or How to Get a Pancake Out of Your CD Player. But do let me know if How to Get an Idiot Out of the White House gets published.

With nonfiction books, especially for children, the titles can be pretty straightforward. If you want a books about snakes, the title Snakes would be a pretty obvious choice. I suppose authors could use something like Eve’s Bane or The Thing In My Garden That I Find Scary as titles, but they never seem to do that. Given the obvious title syndrome (or OTS — see your doctor for a prescription), it should come as no real surprise that two books with similar title formats came into my library on the same day.

A Tiger Grows Up, by Anastasia Suen, is a nonfiction picture book for younger readers. The pictures are beautiful, really stunning. The text is simple with a sentence or two on each page, and usually a little fact insert on each spread. The words are easy enough for a beginning reader, or it could be enjoyed as a read-aloud to a preschooler. I’d tell the plot, but you’ve probably guessed from the book’s title. It is one in a series of books of Wild Animals, that includes a hippopotamus, elephant, rhinoceros, lion, and a baboon — all growing up, presumably.

Now, A Bear Cub Grows Up, by Pam Zollman, is one of a series of books from Scholastic News. The series includes books about a shark pup, tadpole, chick, turtle hatchling, and spiderling (what a cute word). These books are intended as beginning-reader books, with a few simple sentences per page, easy vocabulary, and large type. The left page is text and the right page is a photo, sometimes with a caption. The ending summarizes what the child has read in smaller type, perhaps for the parent to review with the child — as I did with my beginning reader.

Both series are great, just different in audience and style. But with the plethora of words at the publishers’ disposal, perhaps they could have found a way to differentiate these two series more clearly. Assuming they care. Which they probably don’t. It’s librarians and parents who will get confused as they try to look up one title or another in the series. So, remember, if it is the adult animal’s name (i.e., tiger) it’s the Wild Animals series. If it uses the baby animal name (i.e., spiderling), it’s the Scholastic News series. Got that? Good.

How to judge the two boy books that I read this weekend? Both leave me perplexed for entirely different reasons.

First I read Jumping the Scratch, by Sarah Weeks. Black and gray covers seem to indicate dark books, but this bright red cover showed me a happier read.

So much for that theory.

I knew this was the author of So B. It, and perhaps should have expected more in the self-discovery vein. Also, like the other book, the author draws out the mystery of the past, allowing the reveal at the very end. But while this worked in So B. It, where the main character had to track down her mother’s story, in this case the story is inside the main character all along and he is trying to forget it. I don’t think the structure works as well, especially since the reader can figure out what the secret is early on in the book.

Jamie and his mother have moved in with his aunt after Jamie’s dad left them. Their presence is welcome and needed, as his aunt had an accident at work and has lost her memory. She is able to remember things before the accident, but isn’t able to form new memories. Jamie and his mom try to find the right magic trigger that will bring it all back for her. At the same time, Jamie is struggling to forget something that happened to him not too long ago. When he meets a girl who lives in the same trailer park, she shows signs that she may know his secret — and that she may be able to help.

The book is all right, and the issue of sexual abuse is handled well. But the secret is pretty obvious, and the conclusion to the aunt’s problems is unrealistic. And certainly not a bright-red, happy kind of book at all.

The second tricky book was Gifted, by Beth Evangelista. The cover shows a flagpole from which flies a pair of boxer shorts with white mice. Seems like a funny book.

And it is, if you find bullying and tormenting amusing, which I don’t. This book is a tough call. The writing is funny. But the situation — avoiding getting beaten up — not so much.

George is a smart kid loved by his parents and teachers, but not by his peers. He is especially tortured by the Bruise Brothers who seem to have it in for him. When he has to go on an eighth-grade sleepover field trip (are there schools that have week-long sleepover field trips?) away from the protection of his principal father, George knows the bullies are going to get him. All he has are his powers of avoidance and his best friend Anita.

Through the course of the book, we find out how much George has always put himself first, so perhaps he has some of this coming to him. But I can’t buy that any kid deserves to be beaten up because he has been selfish and superior. While the writing is very funny, I would like to see it applied to a different plot than avoiding getting beaten up, which doesn’t make me feel so good laughing about it. There were some good moments in the book, and a point at which George has to face his fears. But overall, not as humorous as a pair of boxers up a flagpole might lead you to believe.

An Open Letter to Betty Crocker, Since Their Comment Feature Is Currently Unavailable

I thought I had gotten used to the new packaging conventions, whereby companies short-change consumers by putting less actual product in the boxes/bags. But your 6.5-ounce muffins packs are a new low. Why? Because they make five muffins. Five. Not six, which one would assume is the standard — as it has been for years. Five, which you won’t realize until you read the directions.

Now, I am generally out of the baking loop. I suppose it is possible that new five-cup muffin tins are in vogue. But if that is indeed the case then why does the stupid, tiny picture of the muffin tin on the back show SIX MUFFINS?

Would it kill you to put the appropriate amount of muffin mix in the bag — which I am guessing would bring it up to the standard eight ounces — and maybe forgo a little bit of profit? Or even raise the price if you are so inclined, but stop this muffin madness.

Sincerely,
A Ticked-Off Consumer

Well, not me. But in these two books Italy features strongly. And I have a friend visiting Italy now. Is she sending me some signal through these books? Hmm, I say.

I liked the first book until the end, which puts me in a quandary. I don’t like reviews that give away too much information. I want to read the minimum I need to get me interested in the book and not a sentence more. That said, the important thing for me to convey, the flaw in the book, is in the ending. Hmm, again.

So, here’s an analogy. Suppose you were reading a book about a kid struggling with drug abuse, and you like these sorts of books anyway. As you read, you think that the author is handling the drug abuse issue very well, but you know from the ominous tone that something bad is going to happen to this kid. Given the drug abuse, you suspect an overdose is coming up. You are in the last, say, twenty pages in the book and he come to a crisis point with his addiction, but seems to pass it unharmed. Then he hikes into the woods, is bitten by a rattlesnake, and dies.

You can say, "Wow. I didn’t expect that ending!" or you can say, "What was the drug addiction story leading up to anyway? I feel cheated!" Or maybe a little of both.

Friends of the Heart, by Kate Banks, is NOT about drug abuse. Let me make that clear. But the build-up of tension in the story seems to go nowhere in a way that is both realistic (when were all of your problems taken care of cleanly?) and unsettling (but this is a book, and I want the proper ending).

Lucrezia has been friends with Ollie since they were babies. They are friends of the heart, or amici del cuore if you prefer. They lived together in Rome until Ollie had to move away. Now they visit each other when they can, with their long visit being in the summer at Lucrezia’s grandparents’ house by the sea. Lucrezia is thirteen this year and wonders how her longtime friendship with a boy will change. They are joined on their adventures by the sea by a summer resident they have always known, Anna Maria, and a fourteen-year-old boy, Martin, staying with his grandparents on the shore for the first time. With the world of Ollie and Lucrezia opening up to include these other two, tensions arise and things change for all of them.

I enjoyed the characters’ interactions and development. I really enjoyed the view into a Italian summer. I think the book was well written overall. The ending was not what I expected, and I don’t say that in a good way. However, it is a gentle read, and I may include it in my booktalk to the seventh graders. Certainly, there is nothing inappropriate in it.

Now, I’ll review a book 180 degrees away in tone from the first one, yet about travel in Italy and about a thirteen-year-old girl. It’s interesting that I read it following the first one, not knowing what it was about, exactly. I mean, the title is Four Things My Geeky-Jock-of-a-Best-Friend Must Do in Europe, so I had some idea, but I didn’t pick it deliberately.

Brady is going on a cruise in the Mediterranean with her mother as a kind of “not-mitzvah,” and has been left instructions of what do to by her best friend. Delia has written these instructions on Brady’s hand and arm so she cannot ignore them. She must write Delia about her adventures, must wear a bikini in public, and meet a cute Euro guy. But Brady has always been the shy one, and doesn’t know what to do without Delia. But following Delia’s instructions as much as possible, Brady comes out of her shell and has a great time.

There are a lot of contemporary references in the book which make it accessible. Brady reads Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging on the plane even though her mother says it is inappropriate (and Brady has a more than a little of that Georgia attitude throughout). At a party they give away LiveStrong-type bracelets. Most interesting to me, and what makes this an easy booktalk in this area, is the mention of the Nationals baseball team and Old Town Alexandria. I’m not surprised, given that the author, Jane Harrington lives in Alexandria, just outside of Washington D.C., but it is a little bonus for my enjoyment.

I liked this book unreservedly. It is fun, light, and entirely appropriate for all teens — and adults.

Finally! I’ve been reading all these YA novels, and had only found one (Happy Kid) that I could/wanted to use when I booktalk to the seventh graders in the fall. Now, here comes the second for my list, and it’s a great one. Absolutely fantastic, I should say.

I’ve had Shug by Jenny Han since the beginning of May, and I just hadn’t gotten around to it. I had a good feeling about it and wanted to save it for a special day. Today it is hot, but pleasant, the rain of the past week having swept the humidity away. I went outside to enjoy this lovely white book with the red popsicle on the front, and felt like I had just the right book for just the right day. And how right I was.

Annemarie, called Shug by her family, is making the transition from elementary school to middle school and from being a girl to being a girl. One of her best friends is a boy, but suddenly he is looking different to Shug. He looks like a boy. Shug also has to deal with a father who is never around, a mother who drinks too much, and a sister who is way too pretty. She is trying to find her own place and adjust to who she is becoming and who her classmates are becoming. Living in a small southern town, she has known everyone for all of her life. Her parents are from the same town, and they have known everyone all their lives. It makes changes even harder.

Shug is so realistic and so honest. The characters are flawed, but they are all trying to be better people. Shug’s mom makes some mistakes when she has been drinking, but she tries to make up for it later. Shug’s friend Mark has always been good to her, but he doesn’t stand up for her when he should. All of the people in the book have some good and bad about them, and that is what makes it feel so real.

Jenny Han has a website and a blog that look pretty interesting. This is her first novel, and I can bet we’ll be seeing more wonderful things coming down the pike. I personally am hoping to hear more about Shug as this book only covers the first few months of seventh grade, and I feel like I was just getting to know her. The good books always end too soon.

It’s a sad day in the kidlitosphere if the upholding of Poetry Friday falls to me. It seems like everyone else is on vacation, recovering from ALA, or just abstaining. But I’ve been holding onto this book for two weeks now and even though it is a picture book written as a poem rather than a poem itself or even a book of poetry, I’m going with it because I am the last one standing, as scary as that is.

My seven-year-old picked out Got to Dance by M.C. Helldorfer from the picture book section of our local library. This is remarkable because we rarely go to our local library, and I usually just pick out books from my branch that I think the kids will like. Since they get to pick out their own books weekly at the school library, I never felt they were particularly deprived. Sometimes they come to my branch, where they spend the whole time playing games on the children’s computer. So be it.

Anyway, my daughter picked this book out, and we read it that night. It is about a young girl home with her grandpa while her mom is at work and her brother is at camp. The girl has the summertime blues, but shakes them off with dancing. The whole book is done is free form verse, with some rhyming and some not. It is a wonderful tribute to the joys of summer when you are little and just happy. A sample:

Bare feet — yow!
the burning hot street
makes me dance, dance.

Beneath the bus seats,
jig-jigging feet
do a crosstown dance.

The illustrator, Hiroe Nakata, is one of my favorites with her soft yet vibrant watercolor illustrations. They fit perfectly with the happy, light text. The characters are African-American, but their ethnicity isn’t a factor in the storyline. This is a great summertime in the city book, and poetry at its best.

So, I was reading an email from my best friend, and he sent a picture of his new baby boy. I wrote back to say how very cute his baby is and also how he (my friend) is looking pretty good himself. I gave a brief update to hold us until our next phone call and mentioned the things I had done on my blog — namely the 48 Hour Book Challenge and the Mo Willems meeting post. My friend replied that he had seen both and that the Mo meeting was so me. The discussion of this post reminded me that a coworker had told the director of the agency that coordinated the Mo event about my description of said event. I begin to wonder if I had written anything “wrong” from that perspective, and went back to read it. I did describe the director as shooting daggers with her eyes while smiling, but I don’t think that is too bad. As I read the two posts, I came across the link to Mo’s website. Since websites aren’t updated like blogs, I don’t go back there very much, but with the link right in front of me it was as good a time as ever. And I discovered two things.

One, that Pigeon and Knuffle bunny ringtones are available for your cell phone. I am sooo getting “Let me drive the bus!”

Two — and more important (well, to me) — is that under “The Pigeon’s funny!” is a link to my article in Edge of the Forest, where I listed the funniest books for kids up to age seven. So, you can go to Mo Willems’ website, click on the link to the article, click on the link to MotherReader and come back to here. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

My web name is even the way I like it, with no space between the Mother and Reader. And I didn’t think I was important.

With the ALA conference and the first real summer weekend, a lot of bloggers seemed to take the weekend off, so I did too. I didn’t go anywhere, but I can now walk through my living room without stepping over the contents of my daughter’s school desks. Way to go me.

Six days ago, I read a review on Chicken Spaghetti for a quinceañero book. In the comments, Jen Robinson mentioned how she had just reviewed a quinceañeo book and then it was noted that the book Cuba 15 is also about a quinceañero. I chimed in that I had read that book and would skim it and write about it that night.

So much for that.

I did pick up the book that Thursday, but found that I wasn’t able to just skim it. I remembered that I had read it, liked it, and recommended it for our summer reading list two years ago. But I could not remember enough about it to review it. I started to skim, but found myself continually slowing down to reading speed. I gave up, and just reread the whole thing.

Fortunately, it was a good book.

Violet has a Cuban father and Polish mother, and has spent her last 15 years staying away from Cuban culture. Her father doesn’t like to talk about Cuba, and Violet doesn’t want to cause any family controversy. Her grandmother offers to give her a quince party, and Violet reluctantly accepts. She doesn’t want a big fuss and she doesn’t want to wear a dress, but it seems to make her grandmother happy.

At the same time, Violet is getting involved with the speech team at her school. She was hand-picked to do the Original Comedy competition, even though she can’t imagine how she will write and perform something funny. She writes a piece about her Cuban relatives and learns the ropes of speech competition. She also develops her first crush and deepens her personal friendships.

The grandmother speaks a mix of Spanish and English, which gave me numerous opportunities to try my high school Spanish. For me, it was more the recognition factor at play than actually translating the phrases themselves. But whatever — it made me feel a bit smarter.

Though the quince preparation is a ongoing theme of the book, it is not all the book covers. It is also about friendship, boys, competitions, and family. I was surprised by the breadth of the novel, having assumed it was going to be a madcap telling of the quince process. Like a Quincezilla tale or something. But I would say it is more about self-discovery and embracing one’s heritage.

Friday, Chicken Spaghetti directed readers to a call for quinceañeo stories for a new book, so I am still riding the quince wave by getting this review done today instead of a week ago. Way to go me.

The new Edge of the Forest, a kidlit online magazine, is ready for viewing. There are many wonderful reviews, interviews, and whatnot, but note the featured article by yours truly. I wrote about funny books for babies to first graders. Stop by and take a look.

There must be some kind of rule by which we can override crediting the author, and go directly to the illustrator. Please, let that be so before Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee write again.

Look, the illustrations of Please, Puppy, Please are extraordinary. Several times it looks like the puppy is coming out of the page at the reader. I love, love the picture where the puppy is rolling in the mud in super-close-up from the reader’s perspective. I love the cute kids. I love that the book features African-American children, but their ethnicity isn’t the focus of the story. Kadir Nelson really knows his way around a picture, and if he was listed as the book’s author, I would have no problem with the slight text. This book is really about the illustrations anyway.

But the text is so simple, it shouldn’t be credited to anyone, much less two people. I counted fifty words in the whole book that weren’t “please” or “puppy.” A sample? Oh, if you insist:

Away from the gate, puppy puppy, please, puppy.

Oh wait puppy, wait, please, please, please, please.

Oh, and there was a page turn in between those lines of poetry.

I get the celebrity author bit. Sells books, blah, blah, blah. But there has got to be some level of what we would consider writing. And it needs to be more than fifty words I could pick out of a first-grade spelling list.

I’ve had to save these books for a rainy day. You know, a day when I couldn’t think of anything to write. Sometimes when I’m at work I’ll make notes in an email and send it to myself, usually notes about books that I don’t want to bring home. Here are two such picture books.

At first I thought I would like I’m A Duck! by Terry Sloat. The pictures look like Make Way for Ducklings in a way that must be intentional. But in this story, the duckling is supposedly growing as we read this from a tiny duckling to a full-grown drake who finds a girl duck and they have babies and start it all over again. So why does the duck still talk like a baby? Is something wrong with him? And then here are the rhymes:

Look at these feet — pretty neat! Wow,
They’re webbed. What a treat.

There’s a strut in my waddle now. I’ve got a wife!
I tell you, this girl has changed my whole life.

Oh, just yucky.

But worse was Eileen Spinelli’s When You Are Happy. Again, good author, I thought I would like it. Started reading...

When you are sad. I will hold you. I will let you cry.

Okay...

I will catch your tears in a blue cup and water the yellow flowers and they will grow more beautiful.

Yuck.

When you are cold, I will weave you a blanket from leftover sun. I will sing summery songs for you until my voice cracks, and I will watch you warmly until I become the firelight dancing in your eyes.

Yucky, yuck.

Hey, I’m a softy. Loved On The Day You Were Born. Love books about loving your kid. But there’s a point at which the sweetness becomes yucky sweetness, and this book reached it. Reached it, passed it, set a new record.

All right, I'm calling it. The winner of the 48 Hour Book Challenge is Midwestern Lodestar! This dark horse librarian by training read an amazing fourteen books with a total of 3155 pages! She read and blogged for about 26 of the 48 hours. What an introduction to the kidlitosphere!

As host of the contest I was contractually obligated to spend a lot of hours reading and blogging. MotherReader did log in thirty hours, eight teen books, and 2262 pages. But as I spent some of my time overseeing the contest, I want to direct the attention to a blogger who logged 27 hours, 10 books, and the second highest page count, 2692 pages. Congratulations to Jen Robinson’s Book Page! In her words, "I found this 48 hour book challenge utterly consuming. I didn't cook anything during the 48 hours, didn't put away the dishes in the dish drainer, didn't bring in the mail, didn't go for my usual walk. I could never keep this up all the time, but I learned that it's amazing how much reading and reviewing you can get done, if you make it your top priority."

I gave myself the loophole of rewarding an alternate challenge, something that didn't fit all the rules. This blogger included a few younger elementary age books in her reading list, but got through an impressive number of them. So with 15 books and about 2220 pages under her belt, Little Willow takes the alternate challenge by storm.

The prize for the each of these winners, is a $35.00 electronic gift card to Amazon.com. Buy books with it, or a nice little fondue set. Totally your call.

If you haven't been spending today making the rounds, let me direct you to the list of final participants. Many of them logged impressive numbers of books and hours. Great job, guys! Everyone found some great books to share for your summer reading selections.

• A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy
• Annie’s Books
• Blog From The Windowsill
• BookMoot
• Cathy the Librarian
• Check It Out
• Chicken Spaghetti
• Finding Wonderland: The WritingYA Weblog
• A Fuse #8 Production
• Girl Dectective
• It’s All About The Book
• MamaSutra
• Original Content
• So Many Books...
• Wands and Worlds

Thank you to all the participants for joining me on this adventure. Thanks to all the blogs who supported the challenge with links and blogtime (like airtime, I guess). It was so much fun starting this summer off with a splash in the blogosphere. Next year? You bet!!!

Check in on the comments when you are done with your summary, which should include number of books read, total page count, number of hours reading/reviewing, and your 48 hour or personal challenge experience.

At this point, it looks like we had fifteen participants. I’ll be back later with the winners.

Final stats for MotherReader: Eight young adult books, 2262 pages, and 30 out of 48 hours spent reading or reviewing.

I substituted two books from my alternate pile because one of my original choices was too long to finish and one was too depressing to read. But since the alternates were also books that had been blogged about, they still fit my criteria and thus my goal.

Of the eight books that I read, I can only use one, Happy Kid! at my seventh-grade booktalking session in the fall, though I am on the fence about using M or F? Maybe, we’ll see.

Some books were light, several were funny, a couple were intense, and one was extra edgy. I enjoyed all but one of them. New York City featured in four of the eight books, which I find surprising since it wasn’t planned. Three books were girl books, three books were boy books, and two had a boy/girl pair. Again, unplanned.

It’s hard to pick a favorite, because they were all so different, but if forced to choose I’d pick Happy Kid! because I liked it and I know I can’t wait to recommend it. My second favorite was King Dork, even though I grumbled about it taking forever to read. It was the stupid font size. Those were some densely packed pages.

As for my experience, it was fun — mostly. It was a beautiful weekend here, so I spent a lot of time outside while I read, and that was a treat. I enjoyed most of the books, so that turned out great too. But I suppose I prefer things in moderation. A little reading, a little chatting, a little (very little) cleaning. My husband and kids were wonderful at letting me read, not interupting me, and taking care of themselves for one weekend. They even cleaned up the kitchen. Well, once.

As it turns out, having to read isn't the same as getting to read, which was what I suspected all along. My real goal in this challenge was to push myself just past the point of comfort, past of the point of fun even. I realized that I had reached that place when I was craving the chance to do the dishes. But, no, I had to go read. Again.

Overall, I had a good time and accomplished a lot. I’m excited to see what other bloggers did. I’m just excited that other bloggers played. What a rush! I’ll spend the day checking out the other blogs, and not reading a book. Well, maybe just one.

I’m at the end of my 48 hours with a last-minute book substitution. I had decided to read teen books that I had previously seen reviewed. But with only three hours left, I decided to take Bass Ackwards and Belly Up, by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain, out of the lineup. I still want to read this, but it is too long to finish in the time left. I also jettisoned Over A Thousand Hills I Walk With You, by Hanna Jansen, because it isn’t a happy story, and I am not in the mood. It’s replacement was Fly On The Wall, and the last book of my line-up, the eighth book is... M or F? by Lisa Papademetriou and Chris Tebbetts. I had also seen this book in a review, so it still counts towards my goal. And, really, I needed something a little light about now.

Frannie and Marcus are best friends. More than best friends, Brain Twins. When Frannie admits her crush on a boy, Marcus wants to help her out. He starts her chatting online with the boy, Jeffery, with Marcus providing most of the banter. When Frannie is around her crush, she freezes and finds she has nothing to say. But Marcus is more than willing to keep her end of the conversation online, even when she is not around to know about it.

Marcus begins to develop a bit of crush on Jeffery himself — after all, they have such great flow online. Though Marcus is gay, he has no reason to think that Jeffery is. Or does he?

M or F? was cute and handled the gay issue in such a nonchalant, non-issue way. It was the perfect dessert for my 48 hours of reading.

I’ll be back tomorrow morning with my summary and a post where everyone can check in. Hope everyone had fun.

At midnight I wanted to squeeze in one more short book, but forgot to blog about it in the morning. So here it is now.

I heard about Fly On The Wall in relationship to a contest whereby one wrote an entry with the theme of said title and one could win the book. I wrote the entry, only to realize that the contest had been over for a week. Since then the title has been embedded in my mind waiting for the book to arrive.

Gretchen is a girl at Manhattan High School for the Arts (how many books are set in NYC?) with a crush on a boy. Problem is, she can’t figure out if he likes her at all. She wishes that she could be a fly on the wall in the boys’ locker room so she could figure out what boys are really like. At the same time, her parents announce that they are divorcing and Gretchen has to move to a new apartment. Her mother is offered a trip to the Caribbean with a friend and says she’ll go, leaving Gretchen alone for a week in the house.

Now, Gretchen’s wish to become a fly on the wall comes true. It is convenient that no one is home to notice that she spends a week in the boys’ locker room as an actual fly. How does this happen? Don’t know. Does it matter that no sane set of parents would leave their sixteen-year-old alone in New York City for a week, especially right after announcing their divorce? Apparently not.

So much for the first part of the book. In the second part of the book, she buzzes around as a fly inspecting the private parts of boys and calling them gherkins. The boys also call them gherkins to each other, which I guess is the author’s way of getting around using the cruder names. She has no problem with the f-word, though, because it is used quite frequently in this section. The reader learns that even the perfect boys aren’t so perfect and that everyone’s body is different. Oh, and that boys are sometimes mean to each other and like girls they don’t admit to liking. Notify the press.

There are other dynamics and stuff in this short book, but really, that’s enough. And analyzing boys’ body hair, that’s too much information for me.

After reading up to page 46 of It’s Kind of A Funny Story, I almost gave up on it. There’s something about a book where the character is losing it mentally which make me kind of uncomfortable. I went upstairs, got a cup of coffee, came back to the book, picked it up, studied it for a minute and thought, “Eh, what the hell.” And just kept reading.

I am very glad that I did, considering that I would have missed a great and insightful book. Disaster averted.

Craig is having some trouble. He doesn’t feel like himself and can barely force himself to eat. When he does eat, he can’t always keep it down. He knows that he has bad days and less bad days, but there comes a point where it just wants all the days to end. Fortunately, before actually taking drastic measures, he calls a suicide hotline and goes to the emergency room to be treated. He is surprised to find himself admitted to the psychiatric ward of the hospital, but makes the best of it. There are the usual crazy characters — crazy being the operative word here — and emotional breakthroughs. What is great about this book, however, is the characters are realistic and handled with a degree of sensitivity. It would be easy to make fun of the people in this psychiatric facility, but Ned Vizzini lets us laugh with them, not at them.

Now is when I should add that I worked in a psychiatric hospital just after college, mainly with the teenagers and children. The author has captured this world pretty accurately. There are usually a few regulars who come back repeatedly, but more of the people seem — for lack of a better word — normal. They just need some help getting back on track. Vizzini does a good job of conveying the messages about depression and suicide without being preachy. He also does a good job of showing hope, without seeming like a Pollyanna.

In the end, it is kind of a funny story, because the fragility of people has humor to it, as well as angst.

One thing that I remember about seeing a review of Dairy Queen was that I liked the cover with the blue sky and the cow with a crown. It looked funny. The other thing that I now remember is one of the other bloggers reviewing Dairy Queen and saying how wrong the cover was for the book. Oh, yeah.

The cover belongs to a book full of madcap girl adventures, perhaps of a farm girl who tries out for a beauty pageant and hilarity ensues. Well, that is not, um, this book. In fact, the title is actually kind of wrong for the book too. Just off the top of my head, I’d name it What’s Not Said. Oh, or picking from the chapter titles, maybe Heifers Don’t Play Football.

D.J. has gotten stuck with running the family dairy farm when her father is incapacitated. Her grades have slipped and she is exhausted, but the Schwenks work hard and that is what she is determined to do. One day a football player from the town’s opposing team is sent to the farm to help out, and he makes her look at how she falls in line with everyone’s expectations. After an initial conflict, he comes back to work and D.J. trains him for the new football season. Along the way, she finds a friend and learns how to talk — a skill she hasn’t picked up from her uncommunicative family. She also discovers that her best friend is gay, and finds that she doesn’t know how to deal with that revelation. As Brian trains with her, D.J. discovers her own hidden talents and finds ways to bring out in her family what’s not said (see how I worked the new title in there).

Dairy Queen had some light humor to it, but is not the book you would expect from the cover — or the title for that matter. I enjoyed the farm setting, having grown up in a rural area myself. In fact, in numbers and demographics, it could have been my high school. Wisconsin isn’t the only place that has cows you know. I thought the message was good, if sometimes overdone. Communicating is good, not communicating is bad. Following a predetermined path is bad, making your own decisions is good. Not hard-hitting stuff here, but it was well presented with realistic and interesting characters.

None of whom — as far as I can tell — ever put a tiara on a cow.

I liked this book. I really, really did. But I am glad that it is over. I don’t have the energy to tell you what it is about, so I am just going to put in some quotes from the book and hopefully come back later with a real review.

“The familiar monotony of standard, generic High School Hell, which somehow manages to be horrifying and tedious at the same time. We attended our inane, pointless classes, in between which we did our best to dodge random attempts on our lives and dignity by our psychopathic social superiors.”

“Still, Sam Hellerman’s peace of mind required that he limit contact with his parents as much as possible, as each enthusiasm stomped upon by the Ministry of Stomping on Enthusiasms represented a tiny missing piece of Sam Hellerman’s soul that would probably never grow back.”

“Ages ago, when the school system had more money and everyone was trying a lot harder to create the impression that Hillmont High School was more than just a clean, well-lighted place for hazing, they used to have a Jazz Band.”

And three of my favorite band names:

• Tennis With Guitars
• The Sadly Mistaken
• Sentient Beard