Review: Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead

This was a surprise gift in the mail from the publisher, Wendy Lamb books, and Random House, Inc., and I am very happy that I got it.  I wasn't sure at first, but once I started reading, I really fell in love with the story and the characters.  It is a middle grade story, but definitely not too childish for a teen to read.

The story is told from the viewpoint of three characters.  One is really the main person, Bridget, who goes by Bridge.  She was in an accident when she was younger that caused her to have to be out of school for a long time, and she still has trouble crossing the street sometimes because of what happened.  She is a little on the weird side, but still has two really good friends.  On the weird side, one day she picked up a cat ear headband and wore it to school.  She's worn it every day since then.  She's told her friends that she's only going to wear it until Halloween though.  She and her friends, Tab and Em are in 7th grade.  That's an age that is near and dear to my heart, as I used to teach them, and it was my favorite grade to teach.  But the things they deal with, well, it's that age, and the book is very realistic about them, as well as very current.  Em has a boy that she is texting pictures back and forth with.  It starts as simple as a knee or a finger, then a belly button, and soon she isn't sure what she should text a picture of next.  Tab doesn't seem to have the patience to deal with some of the issues, or at least she seems to know what people are really wanting, and this includes this guy that Em is texting with.  The three girls have one rule as friends, no fighting.  That doesn't mean they don't get mad with each other, it just means they don't fight about it.

Another character that we get short chapters from is Sherman, or  Sherm.  He and Bridge are getting to be friends, who knows if it'll be anything more.  Sherm's life is kind of up in the air since his grandfather left his grandmother.  His grandfather that he always looked up to.  We now get his letters to his grandfather, not ones that he sends, but ones that he writes to tell him how he feels.

The third character is unnamed to us until the end.  She is a high school girl, and it is Valentine's Day, and something bad is going to happen. She has friends that seem to no longer be the good friends they always were.  And a new friend that she is afraid she's betrayed by trying to keep her old friends around.  Her part of the story is told as she's skipped school for the day, needing to be away from what she is afraid will happen.  We get flashbacks during her chapters about all the events that take place up until the time her part of the story is taking place.

For a while I was really just wondering who was the unnamed girl.  Was she someone we were reading about?  Or someone that would come into the story at a later time?  When I finally figured it out, and the story proved me right, I totally saw how perfectly the whole story wove the characters all together.  It was a wonderful story, so true and real that I really enjoyed it.  I highly recommend it!

Review: Ghostlight by Sonia Gensler

Thanks to Knopf Books for Young Readers and Edelweiss for allowing me to read an e-galley of this book.  I really enjoyed the other book I read by this author, The Dark Between.  While I'm still hoping for a sequel to that book, this was definitely a good standalone story.  Another kind of creepy story at parts, although really, the creepiness was almost explained away in some parts, but then when it came back into play, you knew it was real.  I also liked the background of the house that was the focus of the story.  The way it was built up, was perfect.  While you got details as the story went on, there weren't any really big info dumps that would be boring and they left just enough out to keep you intrigued and wondering, and having to read on.

The main character is a girl named Avery, I believe she is about 11 years old?  Anyway, her brother has decided he is too old for their normal summer make believe activities.  So now she is mad, but soon finds another friend to hang out with.  She and her brother are staying with her grandmother for the summer, with their mom coming to visit for a short time.  But on her grandmother's family property, there is a little cottage she rents out. This year a boy named Julian, who is a year or so older, is staying there with his father, who turns out to be a famous country music star, and his younger sister who shows up a little bit later.  There is a house on the property that Avery and her brother have been forbidden to go into.  It seems when she was younger, she'd disappeared and then been found in the house, and there was something really scary about it.  Julian likes to make movies, and so he decides he wants to make a scary movie about the house.  Partly because one night when he is out filming alone, there is a light on in the house.  Avery has to steal the key to the house from her grandmother, so that they can sneak in to film.  While there some things may happen, but Avery doesn't know if they are real, or being staged by Julian and his sister. One night things go too far.  After that Avery doesn't want to be around Julian anymore.  She's embarrassed and angry.  But it has also inspired her to find out more about the history of the house, as well as the people who lived there.  This includes interviewing an elderly, bedridden lady who used to be friends with the little girl who last lived there. 

Avery and Julian and their siblings will take the things they learn and do what they can to make the ghost in the house feel ready to move on. 

I really liked the way the story was wrapped up.  I felt the characters were pretty realistic, brothers and sisters, and grandmothers and parents.  I think this would be a great middle school level book, and will probably be recommending this to other librarians in my school district for sure.

Review: After Dark by James Leck

First, thanks to Kids Can Press and Netgalley for allowing me to read an egalley of this title.  I definitely enjoyed it.  It is more of a middle school level title, but not in a bad way.  I loved the main character who was just constantly sarcastic.  I mean even in the middle of danger his responses were snarky.  And I probably love it because my brain works that way so that I have to stop myself from saying those things all the time.  But it was fun to read a story where someone did just let it all out that way.  The reactions he got, well, I've gotten those myself before.  I also love how the names of many characters are from the original Dracula story, even though this isn't necessarily a vampire story, although it is kind of.

The main character is Charlie Harker, who moves to a small town where his mom is renovating a family bed and breakfast for them to live and run.  (Jonathan Harker was the guy in Dracula who went to his castle to help him with his affairs).  He's just finished the school year at his private school, where as usual, he was up to a lot of mischief and causing problems.  He arrives in this small town and is not real excited about it.  For one thing, in the past his family has always gone to the beach or other fancy vacation spots.  Now he's going to have to help his mother renovate the inn, and he doesn't want to spend his summer working, he wants to relax as in the past.  His older brother is an actor in a popular supernatural tv show.  His younger sister is kind of a severe girl, vegan, very into yoga and meditation, as well as martial arts.  They have a crazy uncle that lives there, and after a first strange meeting with him, the uncle disappears. This all leads into the conspiracy theory or whatever you'd call it, that the new boy he meets, Miles Van Helsing, is trying to prove.  (Van Helsing was the vampire hunter in Dracula, if you didn't already know that).  Miles is kind of the town crackpot. The sheriff knows all about him, and when he shows up the first night and is supposedly running from something, he makes Charlie and his mom stay in the house and lock the door because he says they are in danger. And then he won't leave.  So Charlie's mom calls the Sheriff who comes and picks Miles up and takes him home. 

But when people do start acting funny, Charlie can't quite explain away all that Miles is saying.  And soon the whole town seems to be taken over, so Charlie and Miles must figure out a way to save their families without getting sucked into the zompire/virus or whatever it is that is going on.

Like I said, it was a fun read.  Loved how the craziness just went from one incident to another, and Charlie just happened to stumble into Miles and helping him out whether he wanted to or not.  The characters were fun to read.  This kind of left it open for a second book.  Not sure if one is planned. But I will have to read if it is, to find out just what will happen to Miles next.

Review: The Swap by Megan Shull

This is one of the ARCs I had to get at BEA.  And boy am I glad that I got it!!  Let me say when I picked it up to finally read it this week at first I wasn't sure because it was about middle school kids and I had mistakenly assumed it was about high school kids.  So I began, figuring I'd go ahead and give it a try since I'd wanted it so badly.

The two main characters are Ellie and Jack.  Ellie is going into 7th grade, and seems to have lost her best friend over the summer to a new girl.  Her best friend's name was Sassy.  Sassy and the new girl Aspen are what you'd call Mean Girls.  Her first days at school aren't great.  In fact when she goes to gym and is changing in the bathroom she overhears Sassy telling Aspen how she wishes certain people would get the point and stop following her around. She bursts out of the locker room crying, and plans to just walk right on out of school until she is caught by the principal.  To get out of trouble she claims she just got her period and so the principal takes her to the nurse's office.

Jack is a popular 8th grade boy.  The one that all of Ellie's friends call "The Prince" and have huge crushes on.  Not that he really knows this.  Jack is not really great around girls.  He's kind of shy.  Jack lives with his dad and 3 older brothers, and it is like their whole lives are devoted to training to play hockey.  They even have what they call a "cage" in the basement where they go in and play hockey.  Their dad isn't really very understanding it seems.  Very militant with his sons and a perfectionist.  At school this same day another boy named Porter keeps opening his big mouth to Jack, including one time shoving one of Jack's best friends so that he falls.  Well finally Porter goes far enough to kind of threaten Jack about fighting and Jack gives him what he seems to want.  Only Jack is used to fighting off three older brothers and he pretty much owns Porter, other than getting slammed into a wall and ending up with a black eye.  The principal stops the fight, and takes Jack to the nurse.  Telling him that she is going to wait until Monday to call his dad. Which is the biggest thing Jack is afraid of.  He doesn't want to have to go to the same private school that his brothers go to.  He likes the public school where all his friends are.

The nurse is a really interesting nurse, very friendly and witty, at least tries to be.  Both Ellie and Jack are in the office and kind of drift off.  The nurse says some funny little rhyme and when the two wake up they are in each others' bodies!  Now they must go home for the weekend because they can't seem to find the nurse, and hope that each won't screw up the others' life over the weekend.  Ellie must fit into this all male family with such strict rules.  Jack is now a girl with only a mom, something he's missed since his mother passed a way a few years or so ago.  It is only when they learn what they need to learn that they will be put back in their own bodies.

Yes, this is totally a "Freaky Friday" type of story.  But it is such a good one, and different because it is a boy and girl of the same age being switched.  At first I was worried what would happen with that, you know, different body parts?  But Jack has been raised to be such a gentleman that he even takes baths as Ellie with her underwear and bra on.  The deal for Ellie with boy parts is addressed pretty quickly at the start with her having to pee while they are still in the nurse's office. She also pretty much stays in Jack's boxers as much as possible.  And I just love how it goes, and how they try really hard to not ruin the others' life by trying so hard to be like what they'd expect them to be.

This is a totally happy ending book.  In fact the way it ends is something I thought early on after Jack was first enjoying being loved by Ellie's mom.  But I figured I was probably thinking the wrong way.  So glad I was not.  I mean I ended this book with probably a really huge, stupid smile on my face.  It left me feeling so good.  And whether you think that is realistic or not, sometimes it is nice to have the perfect ending.  And it was perfect, feel-good, you name it!  Oh my gosh I'm just not sure I can really say how much I loved this book.  And to anyone who just hates Ellie at the beginning, let me just say this.  Yeah, she's a whiny brat to her mom.  But, as someone who taught middle-schoolers for 17 years, and 7th graders for probably 15 of those years, can I say that it is realistic?  Not for all girls, no. But for girls dealing with these types of things?  Divorced parents, best friends turning mean and deserting you?  Yes.  So realistic. And as the book goes, Ellie grows, and I grew to love her too.  At the end, when she sees Jack's brothers again after they've switched back?  The way she felt, I just wanted to be with her and tell her to go ahead and go up and hug them, even though they wouldn't have understood why she did that, they had no idea she'd been Jack that one weekend.  Love, love, love!  Now I guess you could say I'm even more excited that I got to meet the author at BEA this summer.  And here is my picture with her.

Me with Megan Shull

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The Always War by Margaret Peterson Haddix

I've been a fan of Margaret Peterson Haddix since I first read Among the Hidden, the first book in the Shadow Children series.  I loved that whole series, and then got caught up in her stand alone novels, as well as her Missing series.  I'd seen this book around, and it sounded interesting.  I got it at a half price Scholastic Warehouse sale earlier this year, and finally got around to reading it this week.  And I must say it was a pretty good little story.  I say little story because it was a pretty short book.
The  name means basically what you think.  The characters are living in a future America that is divided in half over water, and has been at war for over 75 years.  Tessa is going to a big rally where a local hero is going to be celebrated and given a medal for bombing an enemy city.  Tessa knows this boy, as it is people around her age that are actually fighting the war mostly.  His name is Gideon, and they grew up in the same building.  Tessa doesn't understand all the hopelessness that the people around her have.  She refuses to give up, and when Gideon shows up, and then declines the medal, saying that he is really a coward, she runs out of the auditorium after him to see what is going on.  But he is swept away by the officials.  Soon he is brought home to the apartment next to hers.  And one night she hears tapping on her wall.  It sounds like a pattern, and so she gets on her ancient computer and finds out it is Morse code for SOS.  She's not sure how she'll get into the apartment to help him, his mother has always been a bit snobby.  But she gathers the flowers she can find, and brings them as a delivery, telling his mother she must deliver them straight to his hands.  He asks her to bring her computer over, and when she does, he looks at footage of his bombing run that he got the medal for.  And he sees all these innocent people going about their business, dying as the bombs are dropped.
Tessa is not sure what this means.  But when she catches Gideon sneaking out of the apartment one night, she decides to follow him.  She ends up on a military plane that he purchased on the black market, and when they go into enemy territory so that he can try to apologize and surrender for what he did, things don't turn out quite the way he thought.  The enemy territory is a bit different than expected.  Not to mention that Tessa wasn't the only stowaway on the plane, a girl named Dek, who works for the guy who sold Gideon the plane is also there.  Together they search through the enemy territory trying to figure out what is going on, and how to get back, and what to do once they get there.
A quick, but good story.  Love the bit of a twist at the end.  Won't give too much away, but it reminds me of another science fiction story that has a twist, but it's kind of an opposite twist.  Hmm, that's confusing sounding.  But if I tell you what story, and you've read that story, you'll know what happens in this book.  And if I tell you what happens, or what that story is and you haven't read it, well I'll mess that story up for you too!  Anyway, it's a good middle grade level read.
Also, I'm really excited because this author is coming to my town in about a month.  I can't wait to meet her!