Article from Library Journal, commentary from Miss Ami

 Library Journal XPress has an interesting article this week about book review blogs. When I first started working as a librarian, I came fresh from years as a teacher. I knew what my students liked, and filled in some holes in the collection accordingly. Like a good little librarian, however, I relied heavily on published reviews - like those in the School Library Journal - for the rest of my ordering.

And bombed heavily.

Readers everywhere are different. While the time-honored review sources should be looked at, they are just one of many tools. As I got to know my patrons better, I became better able to choose books they would need or want (there is often a difference - very seldom to kids come to me and ask me to please buy more books about the constitution - but they sure do go out when US History report time comes around!)

We had one director, briefly, who believed heavily in the power of reviews. We frequently had one of two conversations:

D: We don't need this book, it didn't get good reviews.
A: There are already two patrons on the waiting list.

or:

D: You need to order this book, it was on the Land of Enchantment list.
A: But it's stupid. No one will read it. (P.S. - I was right, no one did)

Not that I don't make mistakes. I really thought the video series on authors that followed them around their homes, etc., was pretty cool. So it irked me to discard them this week, after acknowledging that they have only gone out once or twice each in the past four years. I recently made a quick check of books I have ordered for YA recently, and they have all been checked out at least once already.

I don't really get the credit for that, though. Neither does the School Library Journal. Credit for the YA selections mostly goes to Miss Amanda at A Patchwork of Books, who is NEVER wrong about YA. I mean it, never! For picture books? Amanda again, but Bookie Woogie is a also good source of both new titles and old ones we may have missed. For scifi? Charlotte's Library, or A League of Extraordinary Writers. Abby the Librarian is a great source for middle grade fiction titles.

My point? If it weren't for book bloggers, each with their own little niches, I would miss out on a lot of titles my patrons enjoy. I would also probably order books that look great in a catalogue, but fail to deliver. Do I buy everything that gets a good review from a blogger? Heavens no - but through blogs, we can get to know the reviewer, get a feel for how in sync they are with our patrons, and order accordingly. With the New York Times, not so much.

So, yay for bloggers! I give us all a

10 out of 10.

Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes, by Eric Litwin, art by James Dean

Time to break out your best Bob Marley voice, and be ready to read this one over...and over...and over! You'll have help, though, because your little ones won't be able to resist chiming in, especially on the song. What's the tune for the song, you ask? Why, just hop on over to Pete the Cat's page at Harper Collins, and right-click on "Download". You also have to watch the video of two little girls reading the story, it's a riot! It may even inspire your family to film its own version of a favorite story. As for us, we can't wait to use this one at story time when we do the letter "C" in a few weeks - cats and colors, double points!

Nonfiction Monday: Shih Tzus and Boston Terriers are the Best! by Elaine Landau

So, our custodian is retired Navy. Big guy. Fixes up cars. Drives a Mustang. What kind of dog does he have?

Yep, a little fuzzball. Cute little guy, too! He has come to visit a few times, and we love that he doesn't bark his head off like some little dogs. We're more familiar with big dogs ourselves, so when this book arrived from Lerner, we asked him to check it over for accuracy. As we expected, it passed the test.

This is the third set we have received from this series (see an earlier review here), and we are happy to see Lerner is continuing with the same quality. Many breed-specific dog books for children fall into one of several pitfalls. Some aren't really very breed-specific at all. Some focus too much on the positive attributes of a breed, making everyone want to go out and adopt one without knowing what they are getting into. Some swing so hard the other way, the reader is left feeling ambivalant at best.

We do have to point out the first 'mistake' we have noticed in these books, although it is a tiny one.

In Boston Terriers are the Best, right next to a caption stating "Ask your vet how much food you should give your BT", we see a photo of a Boston Terrier munching from a bowl of food bigger than he is. Probably NOT what your vet is going to recommend. Many of the photos in this series feature a large animal/head/object in the forefront, and this is just following suit. Not a huge deal, but since the photos and text in this series usually match up so well, we thought it worth mentioning.

That tiny detail aside, these books contain a thorough and accurate overview of each breed, while maintaining a very upbeat and accessible style. As we mentioned, we are more into big dogs. These books don't make us want to run out and get a Shih tzu (it's hard to groom a puppy when your flippers can't hold a brush), but we do have an appreciation now for their happy little personalities, or for the Boston terrier's intelligence. If your library can only get one series of dog books, we strongly suggest this one! We give both of these a

5 out of 5.

For more reviews of nonfiction books, hop over to The Book Nosher (We love that name!)

Love Sucks, by Melissa Francis

"AJ Ashe may have gotten rid of her vampire stalker and her evil ex-teacher, but things are hardly back to normal. For one thing, she still has to maintain a strict look-but-don't-touch policy with Ryan, her hot ex-boyfriend-turned-stepbrother. For another, she has to learn to control her vampire superpowers—which means more than a few dates with Lex, mind-reading professional vampire trainer and too-sexy-for-his-own-good bad boy. And as if that's not enough, she happens to be the key to her father's plans to take over the world . . . and he'll stop at nothing to get what he wants.
All this and she's still got to plan the prom. Being a teenager is tough, but being a teenage vampire just flat out sucks!"

We have to admit right off the bat, this is the second in a series, and we have not read the first (Bite Me). Our library did not own the first, and we were frankly not keen on ordering yet another vampire book just so we could review this one. So we started reading Love Sucks.

Hmm. Hee hee, good line. Oh, nice zinger. Our favorite teen might like these.

Chuckle. She would love these.

And then we meet Lex...she will love, love, LOVE these! Pause to write out order card and slap a patron request on it. We get it first, though, Favorite Teen can wait.

A little while back, Amanda at A Patchwork of Books alluded to us being slightly sarcastic. We have NO idea what she means, but we did love the main character's constantly snarky comments and her way of using humor to handle stress. When addressing a demon trying to eat her sister, we get 

"D***, you're a big bucket of ugly,"

(there is a bit of mild swearing throughout) or;

The demon bared its fangs and wrapped its meaty fingers around my wrist and pulled me into its chest. "We need to have a serious discussion about your manners and your lack of dental hygiene," I said.

You might think it would be hard for a turtle to identify with a teenage vampire, but we found ourselves nodding and rolling our eyes at parts like:

To my horror, every girl on the committee squeed. (Why do people squee? Seriously.)

AJ is very likeable. There's plenty of action, mixed with romance - the boy you can't have but can't forget, and the boy you don't want to like but can't resist ("a smile so cocky that I was torn between wanting to slap it off his face and wanting to stare at it for hours.") Award-winning literature? Probably not - but your Twilight fans and teen lit readers will eat it up. We give this one a

4 out of 5.

Oops!

Dontcha hate it when you have a review post all set up except for the quotes you wanted to include...but you have left the book elsewhere? Sigh. We already felt guilty for missing so many Nonfiction Mondays - we just haven't had too many nonfiction books grabbing our attention this summer.

Lerner to the rescue! A whole box of books to review arrived yesterday - Antarctica! Armadillos! Art! The Alamo! And even some things that don't begin with "A"! We will be learning and reviewing (and alliterating) like gangbusters shortly, so stay tuned!

Birthmarked by Caragh M. O'Brien

We were intrigued by the premise of this book, and had to order it:

"In the future, in a world baked dry by the harsh sun, there are those who live inside the wall and those, like sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone, who live outside. Gaia has always believed it is her duty, with her mother, to hand over a small quota of babies to the Enclave. But when Gaia's mother and father are arrested by the very people they so dutifully serve, Gaia is forced to question everything she has been taught to believe. Gaia's choice is now simple: enter the world of the Enclave to rescue her parents, or die trying."

In some ways, the book is very satisfying. Gaia is a stong character with realistic emotions, brave but fallible. The plot works in that things don't always go according to plan, and of course the whole premise is something we haven't seen recently - somewhat reminiscent of The Handmaid's Tale which is definitely not a YA book, or perhaps The Giver.

Unfortunately, there were also many areas we were dissatisfied with. Let's take the premise to begin with. Turtles aren't particularly close to their offspring. We pretty much lay the eggs and leave them to their own devices. From what we understand of humans, however, they are incredibly attached to their hatchlings, even before they emerge from the egg - er, womb. In books like The Handmaid's Tale, the women who are forced to give up their babies are under the control of a government much more suppressive than that in Birthmarked. In The Giver, they are all under the influence of drugs that suppress strong emotions. Even in American human history, when slaves were constantly forced to give up their children, we have never seen an account of that being done willingly.

The only reason we are given is that parents believed their children would have a better life. While mothers in desperate situations, like the recent floods in Pakistan, may try to give their babies to foreigners to save their lives, Birthmarked has families who are poor but not starving actually putting their children through competitions to see who will get selected! That just doesn't seem at all plausible to us.

Children who are selected for "advancement" and taken in to the Enclave are, at the age of 13, given the opportunity to be "unadvanced", and return to life outside the walls. Nobody ever makes that choice.

Really? Nobody? There are entire web sites and businesses devoted to helping adoptees find their birth parents. Many adoptees, regardless of how wonderful their life is, want desperately to know about that part of themselves. But nobody in the Enclave does? Again, hard to believe. There is also the fact that the Enclave wants only 'perfect' babies. What if an advanced child shows problems later in life? Wouldn't some be encouraged or even forced to be unadvanced?

Of course, if anyone ever did choose to be unadvanced, they couldn't be sent back to their own family or even their own district, because the Enclave doesn't keep records of where they came from. The babies are taken in order to improve the gene pool, but they don't keep records to make sure they aren't related? That sure seems counterproductive. Then at the beginning of the book we are told DNA testing shows two people may be siblings, but later they aren't able to see if others are related. Huh?

That brings us to one of our biggest beefs with the editors. We'll be honest, we aren't good at noticing things. One of the employees here changed her hair color, and we didn't notice for a full week. Other people will point out inaccuracies in a book we have read, and we have to go back and reread to see what they are talking about. So, if we notice something, it is pretty glaring.

In Birthmarked, one of the main characters, the Protectorat's estranged, adopted son, is shocked on page 149 to learn that he is from outside the wall. That seemed a bit strange right away, because there was supposed to be such openness about it. Wait, didn't everyone know he was advanced on page 145? Are we supposed to think it was kept a secret from him? Except then he talks about trying to search for his birth parents before he turned 13, when he would have to decide if he wanted to be unadvanced. In fact, every year a list comes out with the names of all the 13-year-olds who were advanced as babies.

Okay, it feels like all we have done is trash the book, when we really did enjoy reading it. We do plan to order and read the sequel (it is obvious there will be one), and hope there is a little more consistency, as well as some more character development, in the next. Those who aren't bothered by little details like accuracy, and who have a strong ability to suspend disbelief, will enjoy the story. It certainly isn't slow at any point, and gives the reader a lot to think about. Overall, we'll have to give it a

2.5 out of 5.

The Girl Who Could Fly, by Victoria Forester

Well now, that was...
 
Um.
 
It was...
 
Interesting!
 
Yes, definitely interesting.
 
We liked it! We really did! And we think you will really like it, too! But we aren't exactly sure what exactly it ...is!
 
It's a very sweet book. With people who torture animals. (Turtles even!!!)
 
It is not a romance. It is not a vampire novel.
 
It is about very down-to-earth, simple folk. With superpowers.
 
It is realistic. And completely implausible.
 
Oh, just go read it for yourself, will ya'? It's good. We'll just stick with that: and give it a
 
4 out of 5.