Month: July 2007

There’s nothing I like better than a good survival story, and debut author Watt Key has penned a fantastic one! It’s 1980, and Moon Blake has never been to school, had a sleepover, or eaten at McDonald’s. That’s because his Pap, a disgruntled Vietnam vet who distrusts the government, has raised him entirely in the deep woods, far from any cities or people. Moon knows how to shoot and skin a deer, and how to make an impromptu shelter out of bay boughs and pine needles, but has no clue how to make small talk or interact with anyone other than his Pap. So when Pap has an accident and subsequently dies, unsuspecting Moon is left to his own devices, and is quickly taken into custody by the state. However, he surprises everyone when he not only busts out of the toughest boys’ home in Alabama, but takes a busload of boys with him, determined to live free or die trying! Alabama Moon is both a deep-hearted adventure story and an amazing character study of a unusual boy you will soon come to root for. This book was brought to my attention by the teens at the 2007 BBYA Teen session at the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., who all had good things to say about it. So thanks, guys! I loved it!

Sixteen-year-old New Yorker Max Whooten is angry and bored. (He’s mostly angry because he’s so bored, and people are so stupid. I can sympathize.) His whole summer is one big nothing, until his ancient cat, Mozart (aka “Crappy” due to his inability to utilize the litter box) finally kicks the bucket. Max’s mother, in a fit of conservationism, decides to forgo the usual options and instead sends Max, along with Mozart’s body, to upstate New York, where Mozart can be naturally laid to rest in his hippie Aunt Ginny’s backyard, and Max can learn how to get a life and get his anger under control. In Woodstock, Max discovers Kurt Vonnegut, first love, and the power of poetry. He even has an epiphany, which, despite popular belief, “doesn’t hurt at all.” This slim summer comedy reminded me of Blake Nelson’s equally spare The New Rules of High School. Contrary to the ummm, unrestrained title, (which refers to Max’s anger management problem, get your mind out of the gutter!) this is just a low key, humorous look at what it’s like to be a horny, smarter-than-average teenage boy who just wants the world to cut him a little slack. Clocking in at under 200 pages, this is also one read you could probably finish in an afternoon on the couch instead of watching yet another Pimp My Ride marathon (and it would probably be more interesting, too!).

“Once I was a boy who became a man. Then I was a man who became a head.” Frank Marder had one too many, and still tried to drive his date home. Riding high on five beers and his girlfriend’s laughter, he hit a tree. His girlfriend Meredith was killed. A pedestrian unlucky enough to be between Frank’s car and the tree was killed. But Frank was not. Instead, Frank, broke his neck in the crash and will live the rest of his life as a quadriplegic, or as Frank likes to say, “a head.” Without the use of his arms and legs, Frank faces endless days full of his mother’s worrying, his father’s blustering and his own gnawing guilt. He tortures himself by reading an internet site set up just to debate whether or not he should have gone to prison for his crime, and constantly wonders, is life worth living if you’re just a head? “If you can’t have, can you still want?” The answer is yes, and Frank learns that life as a head still has meaning–especially when the last person he ever expected offers him the forgiveness he needs to move on. First time novelist Sarah Aronson’s take on a situation that most people would consider nightmarish manages to not only be hopeful, but also full of humor and the strength of the human spirit. Pair this one with Cynthia Voigt’s Izzy, Willy-Nilly for an interesting “he said, she said” look at dealing with a catastrophic disability.