Wise Young Fool by Sean Beaudoin YP FIC BEAUDOIN

Ritchie Sudden has 90 days.  90 days to think and write about why he's got 90 days.  Well, maybe not think.  Ritchie doesn't want to think the way he thinks you want him to think, but he's worried that that's a cliche so he doesn't care about that...I think.  He does care about his one true friend El Hella, his new very old guitar, a girl that may be just screwed up enough to like him, and his terrible band Wise Young Fool.  Maybe just one or two of those days he'll figure out why everything happened and if it means anything.  Maybe he won't. He may even end up a wise young fool. If not, two out of three ain't bad.

Ritchie has a hilarious and very genuine voice.  Beaudoin totally nails the trying-way-too-hard-to-not-try-too-hard that comes all too often with being a teenager.  Ritchie's crushingly stupid mistakes and unnecessary (but totally awesome) punk rock defiance end up making sense and seeming almost rational as he slowly lets us know more about who he is and what his last few weeks of freedom were like. Especially excellent is the very authentic understanding of music and being in a band.  Beaudoin nails this to the wall and slam dunks it and sundry other expressions for exactitude. It is a welcome change from the often idealized and false look at teen music that comes from writers that have clearly watched too many of those super-awesome movies form the 80s about teen bands Makin It! (this is NOT really the title of a movie starring Lea Thompson and a young Demi Moore, but it could be. It could be.) The music , the grime, the feeling of crushing conformity all make this a book with unique texture, attitude, and spark.  My one gripe is that it definitely suffers from Main Character Making references that are From Author's Teen Decade and Not His Own Too Often, but hey I'm old too so I actually get them! It may be one of many wayward young man write from a correctional facility in a snarky voice and eventually (maybe) learning something from the writing (symbolic of how writing and reading of novels can form a catharsis, perhaps?), but it is definitely one not to miss. 

You can find Wise Young Fool in out catalog here.

Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony YP FIC ANTHONY

Glory was a piano prodigy that has turned the classical music world on fire with her missing of modern pop into complicated classic pieces.  Francisco was an Argentinian teen trying to make it in America.  When they met, they made beautiful music. Glory went mad, then missing. Through photographs, assorted objects, IMs, and letters, a mystery of love, music, and madness is revealed. 

This is a truly unique work. It’s a mystery told through found objects.  The reader is like a detective sorting through assorted clues and patching together the ‘real’ story of why Glory disappeared, but looks can be deceiving. There are scattered clues throughout the book that Glory is super mega bonkers and everything she imagined EVERYTHING.  Or you can read it as a super sweet mystery love story.  Either way there are loads of many mysteries to unlock.  Why is Glory obsessed with the song Chopsticks? What REALLY happened to her mother? The fun of solving the mysteries and pondering the big mystery of whether Glory is super crazy or just really stressed is grand fun. Not only is this a super great idea, the execution is superb nearly throughout.  The design of this book is absolutely excellent. The use of slowly revealing more and more through photos is really well handled and the layout are superb. For example, the book will show you the outside of a book or pamphlet on one page and the next page the pamphlet is opened, so you feel like you are leafing through these objects yourself.  My one quibble (and it’s a big quibble!) is that the photos of Glory and Francisco seem really stagey and sort of cheesy.  I never bought them as two real people, but maybe that works out since they may not be real at all!  MIND TRIP!

Check our catalog for Chopsticks here.

Brooklyn Burning by Steve Brezenoff YP FIC BREZENOF

Kid loved a junkie named Felix until he disappeared and left Kid with nothing more than pain and the questions of who started the fire.  Scout comes along and gives Kid a shot at reclaiming the life, love, and music Kid that had disappeared forever.

This is a true original.  Kid is our narrator and he always talks directly to ‘you’.  However, in this case ‘you’ isn’t an imaginary, unnamed audience.  ‘You’ is Scout.  We learn all about Scout through Kid’s eyes and eventually more about Kid.  This is not only a way to keep the reader wondering about who the characters are, but also allows for the story to be very ambiguous in a wonderful and surprising way. We NEVER find out the gender of Kid or Scout.  The book never reveals if Kid is male or female or Scout is male or female, so this story is universal.  No matter gender or orientation, you can see yourself as a reader in Kid, Scout, or both.  This doesn’t just feel like a gimmick, because the story is all about identity, love, loss, and how easy all three get mixed up together.  Kid feels like Felix took away love, music, and Kid’s identity.  They are all rediscovered in Scout.  I liked Brezenoff’s previous book The AbsoluteValue of -1 or l-1l for short, but found it sometimes lacked focus with the multiple narrators, but Brooklyn Burning is a perfect and original use of the single narrator.  This book is honest, gritty, and raw.  It would be good for fans of edgier contemporary fiction.

Where She Went by Gayle Forman YP FIC FORMAN

The companion and sequel to If I Stay, Where She Went gives us Andy’s side of Mia’s story. For starters Andy did not…take…it…well. Fortunately he parlayed his mix of guilt, grief, rage, loneliness, and sadness into songwriting and has become a rock star. Unfortunately, its three years later and he still has all of that guilt, grief, rage, loneliness, and sadness. At the same time as he is living it down in LA, Mia is a rising star at Juliard. When chance gets Andy stuck in New York they intersect for one night. As Mia shows him the city their past, present, and future collide and leave both wondering where to go from here.

Told in first person in a similar straight forward style as If I Stay, this book has all of the lyrical strength of the first book. It’s very different in tine, however, as Mia was usually sad, wistful, happy, or longing and Andy is usually bitter and angry. His moodiness may put some readers off, but I found it gave the book an edge and drive that was unique from the first title and made his voice refreshingly different than Mia’s. I honestly picked this book up a little hesitantly. If I Stay had the Big Decision to drive the plot: Will Mia Live or DIE!!!? was quite the hook. I was worried a book about hanging around a city and talking wouldn’t compete. But it totally does. We get to learn about how Andy dealt with the events of the first book and see the results of Mia’s decision. The question of “How can they possibly fixed their broken relationship?” is just as compelling a Big Question. This is a perfect companion to the first book and has just as much to say about life, grief, and the power of love.

Teen Read Week 2010

Teen Read Week is a week that celebrates teens that read, because you are awesome! Teen Read Week is October 18-24, 2010. This year’s theme is Books with Beat. It focuses on books that look at music as a way for teens to express themselves or understand their world. Music can be a powerful way for young people to define themselves, deal with grief or pain, or just as an awesome hobby.

We have a display of some of the best YA Lit about teens that Rock and the Role that music plays in our lives. Check it out!

Glee: The Beginning bySophia Lowell YP FIC LOWELL

It’s a Glee-quel! Find out what was happening with all the kids and teachers at McKinley High before the show began. See how all the kids met and how Mr. Schuester got the inspiration to start New Directions in this funny look at the start of the glee world.

So there is good news and bad news Gleeks. This a funny book that captures the spirit of the show and the voices of the characters you love. Bad news: it totally messes with the canon of the show. The book has Mercedes, Kurt, Artie, Tina, and Rachel are all already in Glee with the inept Sandy Ryerson as the nearly non-existant coach. But wha? Didn’t the pilot episode clearly show all those characters rehearse to join New Directions without indicating they knew each other? Yeah, it is a MAJOR plothole and I was surprised the author could put it in there at all. If you can ignore the fact that it seems off that they were all in Glee together before they were in Glee together then this is a good book for the Gleeks out there. I don’t think it’s much of a read for non fans though, there are a lot of characters and without knowledge of the show it would be hard to care about the whole cast. I’m looking forward to the coming Glee books and hope they’ll be a little more careful about keeping them in sync with the show.

Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness: A Graphic Novel by Reinhard Kleist 782.421642 KLEIST

Johnny cash was the Man. The Man in Black to be more specific. This visual powerhouse, fittingly in stark black and white, tells the early rise and near death and destruction of one of music’s greatest outlaws. Spanning from an impoverished childhood, through his meteoric rise to stardom, to his near death and rebirth, Cash gained and lost love several times along the way and sang songs loved by generations of fans.

I am a gigantic fan of Cash and have so many of his albums, so I am very picky about fiction about Cash, but this book totally grabbed me. Even though as a huge super fan I knew every detail in the book the art and storytelling worked so well I read the whole thing in one sitting. I especially love the spots where Kleist illustrates songs of Johnny’s. Seeing A Boy Name Sue as a comic was a true highlight. This is an absolute must read for Cash fans ,casual or hardcore. I think anybody that like crazy rock star stories would also love this book, because Cash was tearing apart hotel rooms while the Stones were just kids (for our younger readers the Rolling Stones were a popular rock band your parents liked). If you like this book, you’d probably also like Johnny Cash’s insanely great music which we have several albums of (CD COUNTRY CASH) or the movie based on Johnny’s life Walk the Line (DVD WALK).