What else should you know without telling you too much …?

Dr. White was a renowned surgeon before she retired. Her specialty was hands. She keeps a notebook in which she makes records of what she remembers; other family and friends also contribute to the pages. Her best friend and neighbor Amanda is dead; her body was found with four fingers from her right hand severed. Dr. White’s husband James is also dead; he lost control of the car when he had a heart attack. Her stock statement reads $2.56 million, but she’s not sure if that’s a lot of money: “AAPL, IBM, CVR, ASF, SFR. The secret language of money.”

And that covers about the first 15 pages. Can you shout “WOW”??!!

A seasoned journalist and creative writing instructor at Stanford, Alice LaPlante used words to deal with her own mother’s Alzheimer’s. In an article in the U.K.’s Guardian, LaPlante explains she tried non-fiction, journaling, a short story, before settling on writing a mystery – a genre she does not read – after an offhand remark her husband made while watching Sherlock Holmes.

What emerges is a first novel for which superlatives like ‘astonishing,’ ‘stupendous,’ ‘stunning,’ just don’t do it enough justice. Part mystery, part thriller, part family saga, part medical journal, Turn of Mind is a book you need to get right now and start reading (or listening – Jean Reed Bahle’s narration is expertly paced, her almost sly tone creating a smoothness just perfect for a most unreliable narrator). Don’t stop until that devastating final sentence: “In the end, that is enough.”

Tidbit: I came to Mind by way of a poet friend (with whom I share a hometown and middle school) famous for her writings on her own mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s, most notably her Dementia Blog. The day I reached the final page and finally exhaled, I happened to join a few of my hens for A Separation, one of the very best films I’ve seen in years. No spoilers: watch it to recognize the links. On that same day still, NPR shared a report that a skin cancer drug was working wonders on mice with Alzheimer’s. And that night, to keep my brain cells connected a bit longer … I started The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey by Walter Mosley (also at my poet’s behest), in which certain drugs make a grace-filled, havoc-ridden (both!) appearance. Surreal synchronicity: stay tuned …

Readers: Adult

Published: 2011

In the Entebbe home of their youth, Christine, Rosa, and Patti witness the debauched, shameful disintegration of their once-powerful, internationally peripatetic businessman father. Their waiting mother, whose adoration for her husband turns to anger and disgust, endures. Each sister suffers through boarding school: Patti deals with the humiliation of constant hunger in “Hunger,” and Rosa learns the true meaning of ‘passion’ from a less-than-respected literature teacher in “Passion.”

Christine – who emerges as the primary narrator – recalls a disconnected affair with a Caucasian ex-pat living a far more luxurious life that he could ever have had back home in “Tropical Fish,” then explores her own American dream in “Lost in Los Angeles” where she learns to stop giving geography lessons to those too myopic to identify a country called Uganda. Christine’s reverse commute back to Entebbe eight years later in the final “Questions of Home” proves both jarring and familiar.

Set in the tumultuous time following the ouster of Idi Amin (who terrorized Uganda from 1971 to 1979), amidst the delicate reconstruction of a country in flux, Baingana creates an unflinching portrait of four women, who each claim their independence in different ways, but eventually come back together – much changed, one missing – to be a family once again.

Beyond Baingana’s well-deserved initial success – including the 2003 AWP Award Series in Short Fiction from the all-encompassing literary organization Association of Writers & Writing Programs, and the 2006 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in Africa – Fish remains her single title. The prowess of that debut, however, should ensure that she is an international writer to watch with great anticipation. Anyone with a direct line to her … do please tell her that her public is waiting, waiting, waiting!

Tidbit: Tropical Fish remains very much in the news! The collection was recently chosen as the Port Harcourt, Nigeria-based Rainbow Book Club pick-of-the-month. Doreen Baingana will be reading in Port Harcourt at the Le Meridien Hotel, Ogeyi Palace tomorrow, February 19, 2012 at 4 p.m.! Wish I could be there!

Readers: Adult

Published: 2005, 2006 (new paperback edition with additional preface and discussion guide)

“Canada and the United States were built by people who valued freedom and opportunity. That is part of the reason so many came to North America in search of a fresh beginning in spite of the challenges,” writes Maxine Trottier in the story’s afterword. Those opportunity seekers include seasonal laborers, also called migrants, who remain a controversial part of today’s North American labor force.

Among those migrants are Mennonites who left Canada in the 1920s and moved to Mexico: “There they hoped to farm, withdraw from the modern world and find religious freedom.” They kept their Canadian citizenship, which allowed them to return to Canada to work when their Mexican farms could not sustain them. That migration continues today … because “[t]heir farms in Mexico, while no longer successful enough to support them, are still their homes.”

Anna is her family’s youngest child. She “feels like a bird,” as her family travels north in the spring and back south every fall, “chasing the sun, following the warmth.” She wonders what a “stay in one place”-sort-of-life might be like, but she knows she’s more like a jack rabbit who makes homes in abandoned burrows just as her family moves into farmhouses “filled with the ghosts of last year’s workers.”

Too young for labor, she watches over her worker bee family. She sleeps curled like a kitten with her sisters, while her puppy-like brothers snooze in another room. Her large family endures the local stares, while Anna peeks through the apples in the grocery store filled with people and things she doesn’t understand. She imagines feeling the solidity of the trees around her, which stay grounded through the fall and snow, but when the geese fly away, “with them goes Anna … like a feather in the wind.”

Illustrator Isabelle Arsenault who also brought her whimsical magic to one of my favorites, Spork by Kyo Maclear, imbues Anna with innocent curiosity in her little red dress with her matching red cheeks. Moments of Anna’s imagination come vividly to life, as the geese sport various headscarves and hats just like her family, the giant jack rabbit bounds out the door with last year’s ghosts looking on, the kitty-sisters are sleepily dazzled by the moon and the stars, while the puppy-brothers lie sprawled every which way on a “blanket that barely covers them all.”

The final spread – especially touching – of the large departing family, some of them already off the page, captures Anna mid-air as she jumps from a tree swing in answer to a sister’s wave to go: Anna and her family, closely reassembled, begin their unified journey back home.

Readers: Children

Published: 2011

Yozo Oba, now 22, is living so blissfully with his lovely young wife Yoshino that Usamaru Furuya the online voyeur scoffs, “… the unexpected happy developments disappointed me.” But, of course, he doesn’t stay disappointed for long.

The lovebirds have enjoyed a year of true happiness together. He’s a rising manga artist, and she helps him produce his panels. He’s stopped drinking and smoking. He’s contentedly basking in Yoshino’s complete and irresolute trust in him.

Into their idyllic nest arrives bad-boy Horiki to deliver a letter from Yozo’s past. All too quickly, Yozo succumbs to his old vices, easily dragged down by Horiki’s envy. Horiki calls Yozo a “criminal” for his many past misdeeds: “The word made my heart skip a beat. Sooner or later, the day may come for me to pay for all I’ve done.”

That same night, the descent begins. Yoshino is brutally attacked while Yozo watches in paralyzed horror. Yozo’s anguish turns him gray overnight. His disgust with humanity – but most especially the utter loss of Yoshino’s innocent trust in him – sends him into a destructive spiral from which he will never emerge.

By volume’s end, the story diverges from Dazai’s original novel, as Furuya the writer concludes with his own framing story: as the online reader Furuya finishes Yozo’s diary, he comes upon an “Afterword” from Horiki, who has put the diary online in hopes of finding a now-disappeared Yozo. In the days that follow, Furuya can’t get Yozo out of his head, and seeks out the various characters in the diary, only to find them all too real. “‘I want to draw this man …,’” and so the adaptation comes full circle.

The final pages of the trilogy end with another “Afterword,” most sobering of all as author Furuya reveals his own high school identification with the suicidal Dazai. “I drew the last scene with Yozo, where he may have ascended to a painless dimension, as faintly salvational. … [T]he original novel … ends with an astonishing, bewildering scene of terrifying, weak humanity that pushes the reader away,” Furuya explains. “I sincerely hope that those who feel the manga is too dark will go and read the novel. A despair that I was in the end unable to convey can be found within its pages …”

Furuya writes, ironically, from his home in Mitaka City near the Tamagawa Canal: “It feels like a thread that connects me to Osamu Dazai, who drowned himself in it.” Whew … goosebumps, anyone?

Readers: Young Adult (with caution), Adult

Published: 2012 (United States)

Disguised as fast-paced, shock-fueled crime fiction, Thief resonates even more as a treatise on contemporary disconnect and paralyzing isolation. The protagonist – a virtuoso pickpocket with Robin Hood-tendencies – agrees to participate in what initially seems to be a simple robbery for a lucrative fee, only to get inescapably embroiled with the Tokyo crime world’s omnipotent power elite. Meanwhile, his last tenuous connection to society is a desperate young boy forced to clumsily shoplift by his addicted prostitute mother. With nowhere left to run, the thief must barter his life with a labyrinthine test of his thieving prowess.

Verdict: Mystery/crime aficionados with exacting literary standards, as well as readers familiar with already-established-in-translation Japanese writers Miyuki Miyabe (Shadow Family), Natsuo Kirino (Out, Grotesque), and Keigo Higashino (Naoko, The Devotion of Suspect X), will especially enjoy discovering Nakamura.

Review: “Fiction,” Library Journal, February 15, 2012

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012 (United States)

Now Shalini’s father has a new job in California and the family arrives for a two-year residency in what seems to be an alien world. Shalini’s father and her younger sister Sangita adjust almost effortlessly to the more-than-usual culture shock. In contrast, Shalini’s immersion into American high school life is painful and embarrassing (the resident mean girls actually drop a box of hair remover on Shalini’s desk!), made even more so for missing Vikram so much. Shalini’s mother suffers most of all, completely unable to adjust to an isolated new life away from the bustling family compound, and literally withdraws alone to her darkened room.

With help from Renuka, a new friend who seems to easily balance both her Indian and American cultures, Shalini soon begins to find her voice (and even manages to thank the queen bees for their depilatory efforts). Gingerly stepping into her new life bit by bit, Shalini’s young heart starts to beat faster than she’s ever experienced for her classmate Toby. What’s an engaged girl to do?

Ethnic chick-lit favorite Kavita Daswani offers another easy-breezy teen read with quite an interesting cultural twist of a 21st-century arranged marriage. Daswani gives a nod to her “cousin … in Bangalore, who … confirmed to me that girls like Shalini were real.” Certainly Daswani captures Shalini’s ‘stranger-in-a-strange-land’ experiences with heartfelt authenticity. Perhaps the less convincing depictions belong to Shalini’s mother – her depressions, her treatment, her failure to mother – and ultimately seem out of place with the rest of the otherwise engaging novel.

Tidbit: The back cover copy describes Lovetorn as a “Bollywood twist on a Sarah Dessen novel” which has me a bit befuddled, probably because I admit having never read a Dessen title. Google-ing didn’t turn up much insight to the comparison (the summaries of Dessen’s books on her website maybe suggest a vague similarity with Dessen’s The Truth about Forever?), so if anyone out there is a YA expert, do enlighten me!

Readers: Young Adult

Published: 2012

Illustrator Ransome deftly balances the tragedy (little boy Frederick in an oversized shirt grasping his grandmother’s hand, the youngest slave children eating at the trough “just like the animals in the barn,” Frederick cowering under the master’s looming angry shadow) with Frederick’s resilient hope (his straight-backed wonder as he looks out onto big city Baltimore even with his small hands bound behind his back, his attention at the Missus’ instruction sitting side-by-side in the library, his dirt-scratched letters in the secret “school among the trees”).

Before he became the legendary Frederick Douglass, young Frederick was a slave, the son of a slave woman named Harriet Bailey. “They say my master, Captain Aaron Anthony, was my daddy.” Raised by his grandmother, he only saw his mother in the middle of night when she managed to visit. Harriet Bailey’s arduous 12-mile trek to see her son is lovingly, achingly captured in last year’s Love Twelve Miles Long by Glenda Armand, which makes a fine companion title to Words.

Frederick spends his childhood being shuffled from master to master. At 6, he’s separated from his grandmother. At 8, he’s “rented out” to the mistress’ brother-in-law in Baltimore. His new Missus greets him with “the first friendly white face I had ever seen.” She teaches Frederick to read – illegal at the time – but her pride in his learning soon turns to shame when the master finds out: “‘If you teach him to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.’”

When Frederick is sent back to his birthplace plantation, he “was not the same [boy] who had left years earlier. That young boy was replaced with a fifteen-year-old who was free on the inside but not yet free on the outside.” With new knowledge and new friends, Frederick daringly attempts his escape: “I always knew that somehow words would set me free.”

Although the “Author’s Note” on the final page reveals the failure of Frederick’s first escape plan, Cline-Ransome also provides an achievement-filled overview of Frederick’s later life. As tragic as the circumstances were of his youth, Cline-Ransome highlights Frederick’s tenacious determination throughout her narrative, an inspiring reminder to her readers of his future accomplishments to come.

Readers: Children

Published: 2012

Her paternal Aunt Naka is only too ready to marry Nanfuka off to the highest bidder, send the other children away, and sell the family’s land. Her neighbors, too, seem to want to see Nanfuka fail, taunting her with her own dreams of accomplishment. Thankfully, Nanfuka has other allies, including Nurse Kina from school who offers encouraging solutions, and even the school lothario Sendi who changes his cowboy swagger and proves himself worthy of Nanfuka’s friendship.

With resilience, Nanfuka manages to maintain her independence while keeping her family together. The deus ex machina ending gives the story an almost fairytale unreality, although Nanfuka will surely continue to face future challenges in achieving her determined dream.

Ugandan writer Glaydah Namukasa won the Senior Award in the Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa in 2006 for Dream. Just 25 when her slim novel was chosen, Namukasa’s youth is clearly evident in her plain and blunt writing, although it also exhibits a naïve freshness. Her literary journey is certainly one to watch.

Tidbit: When U.K.-based international publishing mega-giant Macmillan closed its African operations in 2011 after paying £11.2M in fines over fraud, the annual Writer’s Prize for Africa, as well as other programs supporting African education and literature in East and West Africa, disappeared. With diminishing access and opportunities for African writers to connect with international audiences, organizations such as FEMRITE, the Uganda Women Writers’ Association to which writers like Namukasa belong, and honors such as The Caine Prize for African Writing, will hopefully continue to grow in prominence and reach.

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2006

Here’s a dilemma: If you knew how much a book series might deteriorate by its final title, would you read all the way through to the bitter end? As contrary as I am, I probably would … but I have to admit that in the case of this Gemma Doyle three-parter by mega-bestselling author Libba Bray, had I known that the first installment’s title ironically proves to be a fitting warning – A Great and Terrible Beauty, as in the series goes from great to downright terrible – I would definitely have moved on to better pages. And yet, almost 2000 pages (or 46 hours if you’ve gone audible), here I am …

Let’s start with ‘great.’ On her 16th birthday, Gemma Doyle, the daughter of an English family based in India, has a fight with her mother. She runs off into a Bombay market, then has a violent vision of her mother’s death – by her own hand – which proves to be true. The family abandons India, and Gemma is shipped off to Spence Academy outside London, where Gemma will learn “the necessary skills to become [one of] England’s future wives and mothers, hostesses and bearers of the Empire’s feminine traditions.” This is 1895 Victorian England, after all …

Initially an outcast, Gemma bonds soon enough with her mousy roommate Ann, alpha girl Felicity, and the ever-gorgeous Pippa. She discovers a quarter-century old diary of a former Spence girl which eventually lead the girls into other-world adventures in “the realms,” where they learn about the ancient Order and feel the looming threat of the evil – but missing – Circe. More often than not, Gemma finds herself fantasizing about handsome Kartik, who somehow shadowed her all the way from India, who’s part of a venerable all-male secret society charged with protecting the Order. Beauty turns out to be a big mystery, with lots of fantasy adventure, a bit of romance, enough literary allusions to make English teachers pat themselves on the back, and, of course, plenty of coming-of-age angst in a rather corseted society – think Victorian mean girls with a vengeance.

Then comes Rebel Angels, and the excitement of the new begins to tarnish. The girls’ otherworld adventures continue as they struggle with the responsibility of their new knowledge, although their biggest challenge seems to be curb their own shallow demands: Gemma wavers between strength and stupidity with an alarming regularity, Ann really needs to get a backbone, Felicity’s obsession with power fuels too many tantrums, and Pippa – who got stuck in the realms in Book 1 trying to escape a bad marriage – worries even more about her beauty now that she’s dead. Right. In between their catty fights, their family dysfunctions, and too many forays into self-indulgence, they do eventually manage to come face-to-face with Circe and finish her off. They hope.

Now brace yourself for ‘terrible’: Far Thing is over 800 pages of convoluted plotting – think insane asylum patients and debutantes, caped marauders, factory girls burnt to death, American Jews on and off the stage, talking trees, too many undead to count (including a certain Circe all washed up!), and so much more, whooo hoooo!  The self-absorbed whining hits a fervent droning pitch; Ann’s self-pity, Felicity’s powerlust, Pippa’s histrionics are cringe-inducing enough, but Gemma’s sudden talent for making one moronic mistake after another renders her utterly unbelievable.

How such a memorable start can devolve to such simpering dribble is disappointment indeed. Most appalling throughout is realizing that these girls are either too stupid – or worse, that unfeeling– to bestow a moment of their selfish magic to save a little girl who is being incestuously abused by the monster guardian who did the same to his now teenage daughter.

Dwindling entertainment value aside, Bray wastes countless opportunities to explore issues of gender, sexuality, and rigid social class with any semblance of depth. She introduces such subjects as if showing off, but neglects responsible follow-through: quoting an abusive father’s dismissal of Oscar Wilde, for example, is a clever way to comment on the social mores of the time on homosexuality, but hardly enough when she finally reveals a tortured lesbian relationship.

Final word of advice: If you feel you must read the full series (sometimes we need to know what’s being peddled to our children), choose at least the audible version, expertly read by British ex-pat Josephine Bailey with just enough control and dignity to reign in her over-excitable Victorian charges … even as they turn into caricatures on the page, Bailey’s nuanced voice imbues them with a semblance of saving grace. Great and terrible indeed!

Readers: Young Adult

Published: 2003, 2006, 2007

Even in their remote village, the gunshots are never far enough; every night, Alinda’s extended family and neighbors gather to sleep away from their homes, on the edge of the banana plantation. Everything of value has been buried in pits, hopefully a safe distance from their houses. In spite of the looming danger, Kaaka, the grandmotherly family servant, claims herself too old to bother to seek nightly safety. Then Alinda’s mother, heavily pregnant and about to give birth, refuses to go to the sleeping place, as well.

Day after day, night after night, the villagers wait. Bullets, then a landmine, too soon shatter the village peace. When the “Liberators” – relatively peaceful, yet very hungry – arrive in droves, Alinda’s brother becomes fascinated with the peripatetic heroes, while her best friend and younger sister can’t seem to stay away from their makeshift tents. Meanwhile the adults worry about their depleted granaries … and the growing uncertainty of all their futures.

Goretti Kyomuhendo is a multi-award winning novelist in her native Uganda. Waiting, her first title to be published in the U.S. (from the lauded academic indie publisher Feminist Press), is not so much a story well-told as it is a sensitive meditation particularly focused on the effects of conflict and war on women. As the oldest daughter, Alinda must think first about her caregiver duties over her desire to return to school. The single mother Nyinabarongo and her young daughter are throwaway cast-offs from her husband and his family. The never-named “Lendu woman,” whose husband often travels, is shunned as a foreigner and labelled a witch for her healing herbs. The many wives of Alinda’s Uncle Kembo – depending on his interchangeable religious affiliation – seem to be little more than equally interchangeable bedmates for convenience and comfort.

Kyomuhendo is unblinking in her characterizations of Ugandan women in crisis … and yet what is steadfastly imprinted by book’s end is the women’s determination to survive and even flourish in circumstances dire, tragic, and often unimaginable.

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2007 (United States)

As Wild Rose recognizes the meadow, sky, and sunshine beams of Grandma’s creation – “‘A rug is not just a rug … It’s a picture of life,’” Grandma explains – she too is finally ready to learn … although not before taking Grandma’s hand and dancing under the rainbow.

Author Ginger Churchill, herself a weaver, is the third generation (at least) of women artists in her family. “As a child, Ginger came to the conclusion that art is an essential part of life,” her author bio shares. “It is Ginger’s hope that each person will find joy in expressing pieces of themselves and their lives through whatever art they choose.” The art of weaving, she adds at book’s end, “binds us together across the world … [and] also ties us to centuries past.” Churchill reminds us that like Grandma and Wild Rose, to bequeath these traditional arts to younger generations is a precious gift to embrace and cherish.

Illustrator Nicole Wong (who also gently captures Andrea Cheng’s Only One Year and Brushing Mom’s Hair, just right) imbues Churchill’s sweet story with winsome whimsy. Wong’s signature delicate lines and softly glowing colors move effortlessly between Wild Rose’s whirlwind adventures and Grandma’s patient artistry. The effect is indeed a “picture of life” – an inviting celebration to join in.

Readers: Children

Published: 2011

Wish Maker basically begins where it will end (don’t worry: no spoilers): narrator Zaki Shirazi arrives in his native Pakistan from his U.S. college in the first chapter to attend the wedding of his cousin-raised-as-his-sister Samar Api, the event which will mark the novel’s end. Over the 400-plus pages in between, we meet the many women – yes, the men are mostly absent – that shape and influence Zaki’s young life: his imperious, power-wielding conservative grandmother who is the family matriarch; his widowed, liberal, feminist mother often at odds with the matriarch; and, of course, his free-spirited, rule-defying cousin-sister Samar Api (who is, actually, Zaki’s father’s first cousin, the daughter of his grandmother’s younger sister, to be absolutely accurate).

Sethi gingerly overlays three generations of Pakistan’s tumultuous history – from its violent separation from East Pakistan-turned-Bangladesh to the controversial leadership of Benazir Bhutto to the country’s ongoing struggles toward democracy – with reminders of the unexpected influences of western pop culture (The Wonder Years!) and the closer-to-home fantasies created by Bollywood. Sethi is never overtly political except to allow Zaki’s mother an occasional anti-colonial diatribe, but he does remain keenly aware of the inequity of gender-based privilege throughout. Undoubtedly, the characterization of Samar Api’s mother remains the most memorable by story’s end.

I (again) confess that I don’t have any glaring, obvious reasons as to why Wish Maker eventually proved so lackadaisical a read (and listen); surely it seems to have had all the potential elements to be stupendous (including that 23-year-old wunderkind bravado!). But bottom line: at 432 hardcover pages or 11 hours in narration, such a time commitment is inevitably better spent with others … in Pakistan alone, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Kamila Shamsie, Mohammad Hanif, Mohsin Hamid, Bapsi Sidhwa all beckon with unforgettable tales.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2009

The day is September 4, 1957 and 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford is on her way to her first day at Little Rock Central High School. “Nine African-American teenagers, who would forever be known as the Little Rock Nine, were supposed to arrive at the all-white high school … and make history together.” Meanwhile, Hazel Bryan, a white teenager, walks behind Elizabeth, “… her face twisted with rage. ‘Go home, n****r!’ she screamed. ‘Go back to Africa!’” At that moment, Will Counts, a newspaper photographer for the Arkansas Democrat, clicked the photo and made American history.

Little Rock Girl is one of six titles thus far in the Captured History series from Compass Point Books, which “explores how a single moment captured on film can influence society and change the course of history.” Indeed, author Shelley Tougas uses the powerful photograph to tell the story of the brave Little Rock Nine students and their pivotal participation in the long fight for integration. Tougas devotes the first chapter to Eckford whose first-day experience was even more frightful because she did not get the message the night before about the fateful morning’s plans.

Four decades later in 1997, President Bill Clinton held open the front doors of Central High for the Little Rock Nine. Photographer Will Counts was also there. And so was Hazel Bryan Massery. Counts was able to take a very different photograph this time … one that would be used for a poster titled Reconciliation, now sold at the Visitor’s Center near the school. For the full story – inspiring and disturbing both! – and its aftermath, you’ll have to read the book.

Author Tougas effectively pulls together history, memories, and, of course, many photographs to present a mesmerizing, multi-layered mosaic of our challenging past. The title photo “told the story of segregation in an instant. But it did more than tell the facts – it provoked a reaction.” Change is still in motion … “and the state of America’s inner-city schools can be seen as evidence of racism in disguise.” Little Rock Girl, however, ends with the greatest hope, with a visit to Central High by one of the Little Rock Nine, Melba Pattillo Beals, who remembers being welcomed by a young African American boy: “‘Welcome to Central High School. I’m the president of the student body.’” Beals’ reaction is understandably tearful: “‘… I was expecting something other than this black child. This had been my dream, my vision. This was why I had endured all the pain and physical punishment – so this boy could stand there and say that. It was amazing.”

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2011

Cap Anderson is just 13 when he’s arrested for driving without a license (even though he’s been at the wheel since he was 8), trying to get his grandmother Rain to the hospital. He’s eventually un-cuffed when the police officer realizes Cap’s not an unlawful teen, he’s just not your average kid. Cap’s spent his whole life on “an alternative farm commune” with Rain as his guardian/protector/teacher who’s homeschooled him “to avoid the low standards and cultural poison of a world that had lost its way.”

Now with Rain in the hospital with a broken hip, Cap gets thrust out in that “lost” world with no preparation. ‘Wide-eyed and innocent’ barely begins to describe young Cap who knows nothing of the “cultural poison” he’s about to experience. He lands in the home of a social worker and her angry-at-the-world high school daughter Sophie who has no qualms about letting Cap know he’s anything but welcome. Hardly home sweet home!

At Claverage Middle School (otherwise known as C Average Middle School after top bully Zach Powers pulls off a letter from the school sign), Cap quickly becomes the object of curious disdain. One by one, Korman shifts the narrative to give each of Cap’s new classmates a chance to share their reactions to the new kid. From the wannabe popular girl to the bottom-of-the-social-rung nerd to a football player who can’t seem to stop decking Cap (by mistake!), Cap’s brave new world turns upside down and all shook up. His classmates, of course, are in for some major surprises, too.

Korman effortlessly voices the worried parent, the proud principal, and the nastiest villain, to create a diverse community slowly coming to terms with unexpected difference. Cap’s otherworldly upbringing leads to moments of heartbreak and comedy, confusion and insight. Korman takes great care not to present Cap as some avenging angel against all things electronic and corporate, and instead imbues him (and his classmates) with unpredictable layers of complicated adolescence …

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2007

Being in the throes of adolescence, my two teenagers have little they agree on … especially when it comes to reading. Thing 1 can’t ever read enough; Thing 2 only deigns to pick up a book when he’s got an assignment due (yesterday, ahem). Jordan Sonnenblick, however, always elicits a sort-of similar response from both: “When’s his next book coming out?” Thing 1 asks; “Drums and Zen were great; maybe I’ll read another …” Thing 2 ponders. Hope springs eternal.

So here I am to tell parents with readers and non-readers that Sonnenblick is an ideal choice for both. Really. Tried and tested in this house.

Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie was Sonnenblick’s debut effort (the last paragraph in his online bio says, “I have written a book per year since then,” so let’s hope he keeps that momentum going!). Welcome to Steven Alper’s eighth grade year … which starts out pretty smoothly. He’s a decent student, an awesome drummer, has reliable friends including a gorgeous crush, the usual loving parents, and an adorable (if sometimes annoying) five-year-old-brother. So far, so good … until one morning (October 7, to be exact), Steven is making “moatmeal” for little Jeffy (which only Steven can make just right) when Jeffy takes a tumble and gets a nosebleed … and it won’t stop. Emergency room, hospitalization, tests … and Jeffy is diagnosed with leukemia.

In pitch-perfect eighth-grade boy-speak, Sonnenblick details the challenges that Steven faces – watching his baby brother suffer through the debilitating treatments, his parents’ superhuman efforts to contain their worry, his own impossible feelings of helplessness and anger, not to mention his failing grades, his erratic love life, and the school counselor whose candy hearts make him weep every time.

Fast forward eight years to After Ever After and Jeffrey’s now in eighth grade. His leukemia is in remission, but he’s left with lifetime scars inside and out – a self-described “short, chubby kid with glasses, a limp, and brain damage.” A bit of exaggeration, but definitely a semblance of truth. His best friend. Tad, is an acerbic fellow cancer survivor. He’s “met the girls of [his] dreams,” in California-transfer Lindsay Abraham. So far, school is pretty good … although the home life, not so much. His accountant father can’t understand why Jeffrey struggles so much with math; his teacher mother (understandably) worries more than most. And, most disturbingly, his idol-brother Steven has dropped out of life and is somewhere in Africa chasing drumming circles.

Then a letter arrives: Filled with “super-awkward phrases like ‘educational equity’ and ‘assessment regime’ and ‘holistic integrity of the K-12 system,’” the bottom line means Jeffrey will need to pass “huge, horrifying state standardized tests” in order to graduate from eighth grade and move on. That letter (which ends up in the garbage disposal, ahem) leads to some major planning – including both Jeff and Tad getting through graduation with remarkable results! Another unforgettable eighth-grade Alper year begins …

Somehow, Sonnenblick is able to create both a shattering and hopeful story, balanced with gentle humor and wrenching tenderness. Highly recommend to be read back-to-back, the double novels offer a clear, remarkable window into adolescence … although you’ll need to occasionally wipe away the blur from your overflowing tears.

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2004 and 2010