Book Review - Absolutely Beastly Children

Author/Illustrator: Dan Krall
Publisher: Tricycle Press (September 28, 2010)
Reading Level: Ages 4 to 8 years
Source: Copy for Review
Rating: Undecided

Description from GoodReads:
In this book you’ll find 26 children who are almost certainly nothing like you. You always eat your peas and say please. You, unlike Oscar, would never tell lies. And in your wildest dreams you wouldn’t play with your food the way Nancy does. But even the sweetest child can be tempt-ed to behave badly. Thankfully, Dan Krall has put together this collection to remind us just how unpleasant beastly behavior can be.

When I first read this book, I wasn't sure if I was completely grossed out by the ick factor of this book, or just morbidly fascinated by the illustrations and supporting text.  I shared it with someone at my school because I think I was really puzzled and was curious about what her reaction would be.  Things got busy and I don't think I ever got her reaction, but I put the book aside. I needed to think about this one.  


My initial reaction as an educator was "Uh-no, this is not going into my preschool or kinder classes. I do not need to encourage inappropriate behavior or have parents questioning my judgment."  But something kept nagging at me as I would come across the book at various times.  At first, I couldn't put my finger on it, but then I realized what it was.  Topps Wacky Packages.  I remember back in elementary school going to the corner store and picking up Wacky Packages - there was a stick of bubble gum in the pack and several trading card/stickers in them.  Wacky Packages were designed to be a play on name brand products such as coffee, and soda but with a really gross twist.  As kids, we loved them.  Fortunately, this moment of nostalgia made me take another look at the book.


In re-looking at the book, I realized that Krall's illustrations (think Tim Burton meets Jay Lynch) are extremely creative in a morbid & somewhat macabre manner.  Several of the supporting lines of text are fairly benign (such as "F is for Florence the Queen of Demands" or "G is for Gertrude who stays up too late").  Some are just plain silly (such as "J is for Jeffrey He knows how to whine").  But there were a few that have me debating (such as "S is for Sigmund who still wets the bed").  


As a result, I am still undecided about this one.  I probably won't be placing this in my kindergarten classrooms, but I know some 8 & 9 year olds who would find this simply hysterical.  I know my 8 year old self would have cracked up over this.  But my adult-self has decided to share this carefully.

Book Review - Five Flavors of Dumb

Author/Illustrator: Anthony John
Publisher: Dial (November 11, 2010)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Source: Copy for Review
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Stars


Description from GoodReads:

The Challenge: Piper has one month to get the rock band Dumb a paying gig.
The Deal: If she does it, Piper will become the band's manager and get her share of the profits.

The Catch: How can Piper possibly manage one egomaniacal pretty boy, one talentless piece of eye candy, one crush, one silent rocker, and one angry girl? And how can she do it when she's deaf?
Piper can't hear Dumb's music, but with growing self-confidence, a budding romance, and a new understanding of the decision her family made to buy a cochlear implant for her deaf baby sister, she discovers her own inner rock star and what it truly means to be a flavor of Dumb.



With a great concept and a very cool looking cover, I wondered whether Anthony John's new book FIVE FLAVORS OF DUMB would be a shining star or hit a flat note.  Could he pull it off in a way that was believable and entertaining?  Or would there be a significant amount of creative license taken to make for a good story?

Honestly, I approached this book with a critical eye.  After the first 6 or 7 chapters, I sent an email to a graduate school friend of mine who works with deaf teens.  We had both attended Gallaudet (note: the main character in the book has a goal of attending Gallaudet University - the world's only University for the Deaf).  I peppered her with questions, and I thought seriously about her answers and my experiences with the Deaf community.

My initial protest began when Piper (the main character in the story who is Hard of Hearing) claims that she has had the same hearing aids for nearly 10 years, I rolled my eyes.  Yes, hearing aids are expensive. Yes, they come in all kinds of bright colors which young children like. But seldom would a 17 or 18 year old be wearing the same pair of hearing aids as when they were 7 or 8 years old (i.e., the character would have physically outgrown her hearing aids automatically necessitating new ones). And even with "olympic precision" lip-reading, we are talking about someone getting only 46% of spoken language?! I was concerned that if John had taken some creative licenses to fit his story or failed to get some basic details correct where would the rest of the story go? So I took a deep breath, reminded myself that the average reader would not know these facts and pushed on.

It wasn't hard to move on with FIVE FLAVORS OF DUMB.  Despite my initial irritation over some technical stuff, I was really enjoying John's writing.  The short chapters made it feel like I was flying through the story.  But there was so much more about this book that kept propelling me forward.

First, I like books that I would call "ensemble" stories. Meaning that all of the characters truly play an important role in the book and develop along with the main character. This is an ensemble book - Piper may be the main character but her family, and the members of the band all have significant roles to play and they all grow and develop over the course of the story.

Second, yes, there is some romance in the book...but we don't spend page after annoying page reading about every detail of how wonderful, or beautiful the lusted after romantic target is. It is subtle and appropriate to the story.  Plus I really found myself wanting the two of them to get together.

Third, not only does the book focus positively on a character with special needs but also has characters of various ethnic/racial/socio-economic backgrounds. Yay for diversity that is not overly done but included in just the right way.

Fourth, I actually appreciated many of the adults in this book even with their flaws. Piper's relationship with her parents is one of the things in the story that seemed the most honest and real.  There is a natural conflict when you are a deaf child dealing with hearing parents - this is one part that I felt John nailed. Along with how John describes Piper's reaction to her sister's cochlear implant.

I also liked the interesting advice and mentoring she received from Baz, Mr. Belson, Tash's mom, etc. And though Piper's brother Finn is not an adult (so maybe this should go under another point but...) - I found myself pleasantly pleased with how that relationship developed. It was surprising in a very good way.

Finally, despite my initial irritation over the technical details and sometimes wondering if John was trying to fit some of his thoughts about deafness to his story, I definitely found myself loving the book. The book's back drop of Seattle, mentions of Nirvana & Cobain, and Hendrix provided a complimentary and story enhancing references. Once I started it, I pretty much couldn't put it down resulting in several hours of lost sleep that evening.

After completing the book and pondering the technical vs. the literary, I am giving this a 4.5 out of 5 stars.  I will say that I was a little relieved to discover through an email conversation with the author that he had actually based some of the things I had questioned on real incidents.  Yes, sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.

In 2009, the stand out YA Realistic Fiction story for me was Allen Zadoff's FOOD, GIRLS & OTHER THINGS I CAN'T HAVE.  I loved that book. It made me laugh and it moved me emotionally.  I know that we haven't gotten to the true end of 2010 yet, but I would have to say that Anthony John's FIVE FLAVORS OF DUMB is currently sitting in my top spot for YA Realistic Fiction for the current year.  It is funny, smart, touching, and just a great read.  I would encourage to find this book and read it.  And I look forward to future books by this author.

Welcome to Gratitude Giveaways!!!

Kathy over at I Am a Reader, Not a Writer Blog organized this amazing Giveaway.  There are 175+ bloggers participating in this event.  For my followers, I will be having 2 different giveaways which means 2 winners.

Giveaway #1 - Middle Grade Book Giveaway

A hardcover copy of Ellen Potter's The Kneebone Boy

Description from GoodReads:
Life in a small town can be pretty boring when everyone avoids you like the plague. But after their father unwittingly sends them to stay with an aunt who’s away on holiday, the Hardscrabble children take off on an adventure that begins in the seedy streets of London and ends in a peculiar sea village where legend has it a monstrous creature lives who is half boy and half animal. . . .

In this wickedly dark, unusual, and compelling novel, Ellen Potter masterfully tells the tale of one deliciously strange family and a secret that changes everything. 

Giveaway #2 -YA Book Giveaway

A signed copy of Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

Description from GoodReads:
Hunter, Autumn, and Summer—three of Kristina Snow’s five children—live in different homes, with different guardians and different last names. They share only a predisposition for addiction and a host of troubled feelings toward the mother who barely knows them, a mother who has been riding with the monster, crank, for twenty years.
 
Hunter is nineteen, angry, getting by in college with a job at a radio station, a girlfriend he loves in the only way he knows how, and the occasional party. He's struggling to understand why his mother left him, when he unexpectedly meets his rapist father, and things get even more complicated. Autumn lives with her single aunt and alcoholic grandfather. When her aunt gets married, and the only family she’s ever known crumbles, Autumn’s compulsive habits lead her to drink. And the consequences of her decisions suggest that there’s more of Kristina in her than she’d like to believe. Summer doesn’t know about Hunter, Autumn, or their two youngest brothers, Donald and David. To her, family is only abuse at the hands of her father’s girlfriends and a slew of foster parents. Doubt and loneliness overwhelm her, and she, too, teeters on the edge of her mother’s notorious legacy. As each searches for real love and true family, they find themselves pulled toward the one person who links them together—Kristina, Bree, mother, addict. But it is in each other, and in themselves, that they find the trust, the courage, the hope to break the cycle.
 
Told in three voices and punctuated by news articles chronicling the family’s story, FALLOUT is the stunning conclusion to the trilogy begun by CRANK and GLASS, and a testament to the harsh reality that addiction is never just one person’s problem.

Here are the rules:

1. You must complete the form below.  (Comments are appreciated by will not enter you into the contest.)

2. You must be 13 years or older.

3. You must be a follower of this blog.

4. All entries must be submitted by November 28, 2010 at 11:50 PST.

4. International participants are welcome.

Gratitude Giveaways is hosted by Kathy @ I Am A Reader, Not A Writer. This is a giveaway hop that runs from Wednesday, November 17th to Sunday, November 28th. Stop by each blog during those days to enter all the fantastic giveaways.

Here are all the participating blogs:

Guest Post: Lisa Rowe Fraustino

November seems to be the "official month of writing" with so many people participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).  Today's Guest Blogger is Lisa Rowe Fraustino.  Her newest book - The Hole In The Wall - was recently released earlier this month.  Lisa has been on a blog tour sharing about her new book, answering questions, and doing guest posts.  Today, she shares with us how to get in touch with our inner canine as we write.

Writing Like Cats and Dogs

Way back in 1992 a book came out that helped me learn to write like a dog, Clarissa Pinkola Estes’s Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. It comes down to this: Healthy women share certain characteristics with healthy canines.

As Estes points out, she-wolves are “relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mates and their pack. They are experienced in adapting to constantly changing circumstances; they are fiercely stalwart and very brave.”

If I didn’t write like a dog, The Hole in the Wall would never have received the Milkweed Prize for Children’s Literature. In fact, none of my eight books would be published. I’d have quit after the first few rejections of my “quirky” characters and “weird” storylines. If by some miracle I made it past early rejections to publication, the first nasty review I got would have caused me to quit writing and take up something safer, like skydiving.

Embracing your inner…hm…let’s call it “female dog” allows you to unleash your creativity and have the confidence to express your idiosyncracies, your uniqueness, your truest self—even though the rest of the world may look upon your creations with the scorn of a cat who has been fed the store brand, dry.

Your inner canine is the part of you that says, “I don’t care what anyone else says. I have something to say and I’m going to say it.” Like the dog who keeps standing at the window barking even though people keep telling her to lie down and be quiet, you keep on writing joyfully despite rejections slips and bad reviews.

Writers who nurture their inner canines don’t get blocked for long. Why? Because blocks derive from fears—fears of being laughed at, of being criticized, of being wrong. No offense to cat lovers—I enjoy cats too. Have four of them, in fact. But there’s a big difference between doggy and catty when it comes to self-expression and interpersonal dynamics.

The dog instinctively protects her territory and is incapable of spite. The cat…well. You know. She likes to play head games. Especially with her food.

Dogs aren’t self-conscious. They don’t worry about whether they’re doing something right or whether they will be loved. They go about their business cheerfully sniffing butts and marking bushes and licking themselves no matter how many times prissy humans scold them. And they chase off cats who nip at their confidence.

By all means love your cat— but write like a dog.

Exercises to Develop Your Inner Canine

1.Think of a time when others told you to stop singing, dancing, or otherwise expressing yourself because you were embarrassing them. Write the experience into your next story or chapter.

2. Do something you’ve always wanted to do but never dared because of the reactions of other people—like, cut your hair really short, or paint your front door purple.

3. You know that incredible family story that you’ve been waiting to work on someday…after a lot of funerals? Sit down and write it: now. Heavily fictionalize it if you’re still too timid to go for the memoir.

4. Think of something you’ve done of which you carry a deep sense of secret shame. Let it out of your body. Write it down. Burn the pages in your spaghetti pot, then rewrite the story as fiction.

5. Go out and howl at the next full moon.

For more tips on writing, visit “Dr. Lisa’s Class” at her web page.
Today’s topic: “The Golden Rule of Criticism”
http://lisarowefraustino.com/?page_id=304

Crossroad Tour Winners

It is always fun to announce winners and there are three winners to announce. 

Winner of the signed copy of VAMPED by Lucienne Diver is:
Cindy (Blog- Cindy's Love of Books)

Winner of the 1st Crossroads SWAG pack is:
Heather (Blog - Buried in Books)

Winner of the 2nd Crossroads SWAG pack is:
Kristen (Blog - My Bloody Valentine)

It is sad to see the Crossroads Tour end, but glad everyone had so much fun.

And once again, congratulations to all the winners.

- Aly