Cybils Winners Announced!

What better way to start off Valentine's Day than to hear a book you are in love with has won yet another award? As hard as it was to help pick the top seven YA Fiction books for 2010, one title has remained my favorite. Looks like the second round judges have the same great taste! So, which one was it? Click over to Cybils and find out! (post a comment if you get the hint!)

Edited to add: It seems to have made someone else's Valentine's Day as well.

The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable, by Dan Gutman

HarperCollinsPublishers
978-0-06-1827648
review copy provided by publisher

In eight days, Coke and Pepsi McDonald are going to turn thirteen.
Before then, they'll jump off a cliff, get trapped in the locked basement of their burning school, chased cross-country by murderous lunatics, left for dead in the pit of a sand dune, forced to decipher mysterious coded messages, thrown into a giant vat of SPAM, and visit the world's largest . . . ball of twine!
There's more, but if we told you here, we'd have to kill you.

Gutman is of course the author of popular series such as My Weird School and The Baseball Card Adventures. This is the start of another series that brings the old Spy Kids movies to mind, or perhaps Michael Buckley's NERDS series.

As such, we have to say it's a little formulaic. Most of the 'surprises' were easy to predict, as was the ending. At the same time, we think this will appeal to the middle/upper elementary crowd that like Gutman's other series, those for whom humor and adventure are more important than suspense. There were plenty of phrases and situations to laugh out loud at, from clueless parents to (literal) bathroom humor, to the normal brother-sister sniping. Give this to fans of Buckley, Louis Sachar, or Michael Greenberg.

Hush by Eishes Chayil

Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.
978-0-8027-2088-7

Slooooooooooooow start. As in, so slow we might not have finished it if we hadn't been curious. At first the book alternates between 9-year-old Gittel and 17-year-old Gittel, and the voices aren't awlays distinct. We know something bad is going to happen (or is continuing to happen) to devory, and that the older Gittel is haunted by it, but the first part of the book seems to take a very long time to get there. Slow build-ups just don't work when you already pretty much know the end result.

Fortunately, things pick up about halfway through the book, around the time Gittel finishes school and her marriage is arranged. At this point the descriptions of Chassidic life become more a part of the story than lesson in culture, and the characters become more fleshed out. The story of her betrothal and marriage could be a book in itself - so sweet, at times funny, we finally got more than a snapshot of various characters' personalities. We also get a sense of the warmth and community that we appreciated - this is shown throughout the book, but especially in this section. Honest portrayals, no stereotypes. While an arranged marriage would horrify most readers, for example, we end up being very happy for Gittel, and we see how such a custom could still be embraced.

Of course, marriage brings to the forefront of Gittel's mind the things she has been trying to forget for so long. What happened to Devory, and the way the community handled it, has always haunted her: now it threatens to destroy her life and the lives of those around her, unless she can find a way to deal with it. We are glad we stuck with it through the slow beginning, and give it a

4 out of 5.

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Literary Characters I Would Name My Children After

So, we completely forgot the Top Ten Tuesday last week. We hear it takes 72 times of doing something before it becomes a habit, so long about 2013 we should be all set. Today we remembered, however, and it's a very timely topic as Miss Ami is expecting and has yet to settle on a name. Gender is unknown at the moment, making the process a little more difficult. We do hope that, as appropriate as "Freaky" might be for a turtle, she comes up with something a little kinder for a newborn baby.

Her choices, in no particular order:

1. Elizabeth, from The Paper Bag Princess. This is actually her daughter's middle name, and was a no-brainer. Who wouldn't want their daughter to grow up as competent and fun as Robert Munsch's Elizabeth, with the same healthy sense of perspective? Coupled with her first name (Sheridan), we have a name that means "Wild Gift from God." Perfect.

2. Meg, from A Wrinkle in Time. Perfect ugly duckling story - bright, caring, underappreciated young lady grows into beautiful, loving, wise mother.

3. Katniss, from The Hunger Games. Except there are probably a million little girls being named Katniss these days, so we'll let that one go. Still - great character! Do you see a trend in strong, intelligent females here?

4. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Timothy, David, Daniel...all the great "Bible names". Except, various cousins and so forth have already used those, and naming a baby "Ishtob" could be likened to naming him "Freaky".

5. Jeremy - as in Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher. Great kid, great book. Miss Ami says she would love to have a son with a heart for animals (and people) who is also capable of standing up for what is right, willing to do the right thing even when it doesn't give him what he wants for himself.

6. Ella - as in Enchanted. See #s 1-3.

7. Jack - A good, solid name, with so many possible literary connections. Heck, in desperate times, we could even call him "Jack-Jack", as in the baby in The Incredibles who scares the babysitter away.

8. Stephanie, as in Plum, a la Janet Evanovich. Miss Ami used to want to be Stephanie Plum when she grew up. Now she wants to be Grandma Mazur.

That's all we've got right now. Of course, #4 would put us over 10 if you counted them all. Miss Ami and her husband do have one girl's name they've tossed around, Cheyenne, but we can't think of any literary characters to connect that with. Anyone???

****Note from Miss Ami: So, I mentioned to my husband that the most popular name from the other bloggers' lists seems to be Atticus. He immediately piped up with, "Hey, Jack Atticus!" You didn't have to read that out loud to groan, did you. Sigh. No, that is NOT a name we will be using. I did forget another great girl's name/character: Ronia, from Ronia the Robber's Daughter by Astrid Lindgren. The cover art by Trina Schart Hyman (who I adored) is exactly how I pictured my youngest looking, and the attitude/ability to wrap a big old hairy man around the little finger is how I expected her to be. Well, she turned out blonde and blue-eyed somehow, but the other part? Oh, yeah!

Mini Reviews - Fractured Fairy Tales

Marshall Cavendish
978-0-7614-5793-0

A collection of different takes on the story of Little Red Riding Hood. We love Vivian Vande Velde, but this wasn't her best. The introduction is the best part of the book. That, however, is hysterical, and it is worth borrowing the book just to read it.

Henry Holt and Company
978-0-8050-89684

Loved it! We haven't read Tomlinson's other tales, but we plan to rectify that soon. This one is a retelling of the fairy tales in which the 'good' sister is blessed with jewels falling from her lips every time she speaks, while the 'bad' sister is cursed with toads and snakes. In one of many twists Tomlinson offers, both sisters are actually 'good', and either gift proves to be both blessing and curse.The setting is a somewhat fictionalized India, as might be guessed from the gorgeous cover. One niggling detail about that cover, though: both sisters only had two gold dowry bracelets, not armsfull. Otherwise; vivid setting, interesting characters, perfect comfort-food kind of story.

Room, by Emma Donoghue

Little, Brown and Company
978-0-316-098335

Wow.

And that's all we have to say about that.

Matched, by Ally Condie

Oy! Miss Ami here. Trying to get blog posts up with intermittent internet, while snowbound with bored preschoolers, has been a bit of a challenge. Yes, we actually got snow in southern New Mexico, and since there are approximately 3 snowplows in the entire state, roads are a bit dicey right now. That just means plenty of time to read, right?! Hope you are all hunkered down with heat, food, and a pile of good books like this one:

Dutton Juvenile
978-0525423645

Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander's face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is her ideal mate . . . until she sees Ky Markham's face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black.


The Society tells her it's a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she's destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can't stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society's infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she's known and a path that no one else has dared to follow.

Talk about sucking you in! We already know from the description that Cassia will be matched with Xander, yet when the announcement is made we are just as breathless with nerves and excitement as she is. Unlike many dystopian novels, this one focuses more on Cassia's character and her internal struggles than on any action. We get to know Cassia very quickly and very well. Side characters are revealed more slowly, through her interactions with them, but all are distinct and sometimes changing.

Don't take that to mean it is slow-paced at all - in fact, I kept sneaking away to read 'just one more chapter', because I had to know what would happen next. I was very happy with the ending, while my teenager was irate - and immediately demanding a sequel (don't tell her it's first in a trilogy, let her suffer for a bit.) I can't say much more without giving anything away, but we all know how much I hate easy, pat endings, right? We give it a

5 out of 5.