Tag: young adult

One heck of a sleeping pill…

The Dream Merchant by Isabel Hoving

Book #26 of 2009

I can’t believe I actually finished this book, because I fell asleep thrice while reading it, and had some very strange dreams too.

I saw this book at National Bookstore and was attracted by the handsome cover — deep red with a gilt pattern, with red jewels embedded in front. I searched it on BookMooch and found a copy of the exact edition and mooched it, and was excited to read it as soon as it got here.

I tried starting it a few times last year but I couldn’t spark a connection with the book. Finally, because I stayed home all weekend, I decided to stick it out, and for a six-hundred page book in fairly small font, with lots of vague mumbo-jumbo, I really am surprised I managed to finish it.

The Amazon reviews are high, all either 5 star or 4 star, but considering there are only 8 reviews in total, I shouldn’t have been too confident (haha, I really shouldn’t believe Amazon reviews).

The story is weird — 12 year old Josh Cope is hired by Gippart, a trading company that operates in dreamworlds called umaya. Due to a complication created by some overzealous Gippart employees in one of their operations, Josh and his team are trapped in the umaya and they must travel backwards in time.

It sounds hokey, I know. The ideas were there, but they weren’t sufficiently expressed , and it frustrated me. I hate it when fantasy books introduce strange concepts but don’t give you substantial information or context and expect you to automatically accept and understand its strangeness. Up to the last page of the book, I still couldn’t understand the point of the book and half the things they were saying!

Reading the amazon info, I found out the book was translated from Dutch. Perhaps its real merit was lost in translation.

I want to give this book away because my frustration with it irritates me, but it’s so pretty I still want it on my shelf.

***
My copy: hardcover

My rating: 2/5 stars

My best book for 2008

2008 was a landmark year for me and my books – my books tripled in quantity (thanks to BookMooch), my to-be-read stack (TBR) reached crazy heights (now I have a separate shelf for TBR) and was able to read a total number of 230 books.

This month, my book club, Flips Flipping Pages discussed our best and worst books for 2008.

It was challenging to pick out my best book, as I had a lot to choose from, including:

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Ptolemy’s Gate by Jonathan Stroud
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (reread)
The BFG by Roald Dahl
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Daughter of Venice by Donna Jo Napoli
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

After much deliberation I decided to choose a book that blew me away:
The Arrival by Shaun Tan.

From the moment I held the book in my hands, I was awed by how beautiful it was, and how it seemed to elicit from me a sense of reverence as I turned the pages. Turning the book on its back cover, the critical acclaim is staggering – it is all praises from an all-star roster of authors and illustrators: Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, Jeff Smith, Jon J. Muth, Brian Selznick, Craig Thompson, and David Small.

You might be surprised to learn that my best book for 2008 is wordless – The Arrival is told entirely in pictures, in a series of breathtaking pencil sketches that silently convey so much emotion.

The Arrival depicts the story of a man who starts a new life for himself and his family in a foreign land. Tan perfectly captures the emotional roller coaster ride the character goes through: sadness at leaving his family behind; the stress of a long journey; the relief of reaching the destination; the bewilderment towards a new way of life; the slow acclimatization to a different culture; and the joy of being reunited with family.


Surrealism isn’t ordinarily my thing (see my review for The Republic of Dreams), but I loved how it is used in this book, especially in the new country. Everything is strange and outlandish– from the landscape to alphabet, alien creatures (the origami birds remind me of the paper birds chasing Haku in Spirited Away and the pet-like animals remind me of daemons in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy), food, customs, and transportation – and creates a perfect metaphor for the immigration experience. It also makes a grown-up theme simple enough for a young reader to understand without making it childish.

The book exemplifies the power of imagery – it’s pretty hard to “read” this book and not feel the emotions wash over you, and its cinematic quality makes you feel you’re watching the events unfold right before your very eyes. It made me smile and laugh and sigh, and as I turned the last page, I wanted to burst into applause.


This is definitely a book to treasure, and a must-read for illustrators.

***
(The Arrival images from www.shauntan.net)

My copy: hardcover

My rating: 5/5 stars

Bounce Bounce Bounce

Book #9 for 2009: The Pinballs by Betsy Byars

(ALA Notable Children’s Book)

They really don’t make books like this anymore — the stark honesty of the book is the most striking thing about it. I remember checking it out at the library when I was in grade school but I don’t remember that I read it, maybe at that time I was too young to appreciate it.

A story about three kids of unfortunate circumstances (one abandoned as a toddler; one abused by her stepfather; one whose drunk of a father runs over him with the car, breaking both his legs) who meet at a foster home and somehow find the strength to pull through, The Pinballs is a bit somber for my taste but I appreciate the way it deals with grief and domestic issues.

The tough-as-nails Carlie comes up with the pinball metaphor:

“Harvey and me and Thomas J are just like pinballs. Somebody put in a dime and punched a button and out we came, ready or not, and settled in the same groove…“

It’s chillingly realistic, especially in the issues it presents, but it’s laudable because it maintains its credibility, even as the kids find hope and trust in their new home.

***
My copy: trade paperback from the NBS bargain bin for about P20, a bit spotty.

My rating: 4/5 stars

Photo from HarperCollins.com

Book 1 for 2009: Lionboy by Zizou Corder

I’m not a big fan of talking animals, but this series has been sitting in my TBR shelves for quite a while and I figured it was about time I read it.

Lionboy is a fantasy series about Charlie Ashanti, a nine-year old boy who can speak Cat, who must rely on this special talent and his wits to save his kidnapped parents.

Lionboy is set sometime in the future, when the world’s petroleum resources have all run out. The world reverts to sea travel as the main form of overseas transport, and everything runs on alternative energy; only the very powerful are allowed to have cars. The world is ruled by a superpower known as the Empire, asthma is a widespread condition (blamed on cats) and a pharmaceutical giant known as the Corporacy controls the world’s major industry. Charlie’s parents have discovered the cure for asthma, and the Corporacy has held them captive to safeguard their business.

Although not as engaging as I would have liked it to be, Lionboy, the first book in the series, sustains the interest, especially as Charlie stows away on a circus ship, the Circe, which houses Thibaudet’s Royal Floating Circus and a host of interesting personalities. Charlie forms a friendship with six circus lions and helps them escape, as he gets one step closer to finding his parents.

The cats are particularly amusing, especially the strays, because of their different personalities — a prissy French cat, a wisecracking Russian cat, and an ingenious marmalade. Even the lions are distinct, although they’re all regal.

It’s also worth noting that Zizou Corder is actually the mother-daughter team of English novelist Louisa Young and Isabel Adomakoh Young (middle school age). It’s a good collaboration for an exciting adventure, but also touches on important issues such as the environment, race, and prejudice.

***
My copy: Puffin trade paperback, mooched from Singapore

My rating: 3.5/5 stars

Photo courtesy of http://www.mrbsemporium.com/frontcovers/Lionboy1.jpg

The Cat Ate My Gymsuit by Paula Danziger

Marcy Lewis is thirteen, thinks she looks like a blimp, and has no friends. Misunderstood, overweight, and convinced that she’ll never get a date, Marcy Lewis wants nothing more than to be “normal.” Until she meets Ms. Finney, an outspoken English teacher with an eccentric teaching method that rubs the principal the wrong way. Ms. Finney’s dismissal from the school propels Marcy to defend Ms. Finney, and provides a way for Marcy to reexamine what’s important to her and to stand up for what she believes in.

The Cat Ate My Gymsuit is really one of those classic reads.

I don’t understand why there aren’t more good books for children today than there have been in the past decades. There are a lot of titles for kids today, and some of them are really good, outstanding even, but the rest seem to be moneymaking schemes by publishers who produce books that are more flash than substance.

Some are downright crappy (Chasing Vermeer), or skanky (Gossip Girl), and then everything else seems to have hopped on the bandwagon of fantasy to create just another witch and wizard/dragon/time travel novel.

But when I was growing up, there seemed to be no lack of good books to read — Judy Blume, Roald Dahl, Beverly Cleary, Carolyn Keene… and even one book wonders wrote great stuff! I get nostalgic just thinking about it.

The fantasy genre back then was reserved for the really good ones. What’s amazing is that the rest of the books were simply about kids and their lives, everyday adventures, and dealing with issues that concerned them — something that seems to be lacking in books today.

Just imagine, back in the 70’s Paula Danziger was writing about weight insecurities and Judy Blume was dealing with divorce, coping with the loss of a loved one, and premarital sex. It’s weird that in the supposedly more liberated world that we live in today, the books children read don’t have more substance when they barely even get to read books because of the distractions of modern technology. No wonder they’re growing up spoiled.

Ok, so this was more of a diatribe than a review, hehe. But really, I just miss books from the good old days.

***
My copy: trade paperback from Book Sale

My rating: 4/5 stars