BoB flows on

Drawing from Memory by Allen Say is victorious in SLJ's Battle of the Books.  I was right again.  For some reason, I am a bit nonplussed.  I wish there was some way that The Grand Plan to Fix Everything could get the recognition it deserves.  Well-written FUN books lack respect in the world of books.  And that is not right because the fun books, the so-called "light" or "fluffy" books, are what keep a LOT of kids reading.

Anyone who has ever watched and delighted in the coincidences of a Bollywood film (or "fillum") will understand what is happening in The Grand Plan.  The heroine MUST reunite with her jilted lover.  The friends MUST stay tight.  And the lovely postal worker on his honeymoon MUST find a job in this Eden like village.  Barbara O'Connor, the judge in today's BoB match-up, mentioned these coincidences and I think she was not sure she liked them.  I LOVED them. These coincidences lifted me from my rather coincidence free humdrum existence to a place where the sun shines and birds sing and the crowds break into dance with colored scarves and bells on their ankles.

HOWEVER, Drawing from Memory is, as Barbara O'Connor so aptly puts it, an "experience".  I had tears in my eyes as I closed this book about Allen Say's journey to become the great artist that he is.  I felt enriched and enlightened after I read Drawing from Memory and I feel it would best almost any other book on this list.  But I am at a loss for words to describe it.  It needs to be read and studied and felt.

Both books take American readers into other cultures and climates.  Imagine!  A twelve-year-old is given his own apartment so he can go to school!!!!  Monkeys take over a bakery!!!  Reading is the cheapest way to travel. 

Tomorrow's match is between Kadir Nelson's Heart and Soul and Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai.  My vote goes to Inside Out and Back Again.  Let's see if I am right.

Whatever Wednesday

1. Parent Magazine's Camp Mom has a whole bunch of book lists by age on their site.  When you visit, expect ads.  It's a magazine.  That's how they roll.

2. I just returned from a StoryFUSION committee meeting at Northampton Community College.  This festival is HUGE with events Thursday, Friday, Saturday AND Sunday, March 29th through April 1st.  I will tell you much, much more tomorrow on Storytelling Thursday.

3. So, book reviews.  I am finally reading Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.  Here's a warning.  This is not a good, relaxing bedtime read.  Once you get used to the narrator's annoyingly self-absorbed self-deprecating remarks, this book is hilarious.  It's sad, too, but mostly, it's laugh out loud funny.
I haven't reached the end, though, so maybe it gets depressing.  But I laughed so hard - several times - last night that I jazzed myself awake.  My poor long-suffering husband retreated to the sofa.  Yeah, it's that funny.

And when I finally decided that I had to close the book, I lay there trying to figure out how I would tell people about this book.   Here's the set up.  Greg Gaines has managed to reach senior year of high school without committing to any group, doing any extra-curricular activities, or making any friends - except for Earl, his film-making buddy.  He is a "normal" teenager who has decided that invisibility is the key to survival.  His attempts to remain under the radar have succeeded so far but they create a great deal of anxiety for him.

Then, his mother emotionally strong-arms him into visiting Rachel, a girl he "dated" in sixth grade.  (Do sixth-graders even go on dates?  What?  They're 11!).  Rachel has been diagnosed with leukemia and is pretty darn sick.  The book is about Greg's attempts to "cheer up" poor Rachel.  Then he gets Earl involved and the films he and Earl hoped would never see the light of the screen are shared in an attempt to keep Rachel's spirits up.

To Greg and to the reader, Rachel is a shadow character, there to reflect (Do shadows reflect?  See, now Greg has me doing this questioning-the-writing-as-it-goes thing.) Greg's lack of self-esteem and to convince him that he is a loser supreme.  OK, SHE doesn't convince him; his own self-loathing convinces him that he is a loser.  She actually likes him and his films.

I am two thirds through the book.  I hope that Greg manages to keep his act together and graduate.  Right now, he is concentrating on Rachel so much he's blowing off his school work.  I hope one of his films is shown to be a work of genius - comic perhaps.  Or, that he manages to accept that he can't be a total loss if he worries so much about keeping someone else happy.  I hope that IF Rachel dies - and I'm not sure she will though that's because I am an eternal optimist - that her death is not sobbing-pathetic.

There's a lot of Teen Guy specific bad language and obsessions in this books - just a head's up. 

Oh, I just went to the publisher's page for this book and I have to go finish it - RIGHT NOW!!

ADDENDUM:  I finished the book.  The publisher's blurb promises something and the book delivered it - in a totally consistent way.  I was a little worried there that this book would be - um - socially redemptive in a smarmy way.  No worries.  No smarminess involved.

Scrabble!!!

As in "I LOVE to play Scrabble!"

One of the joys of retirement (semi-retirement now) has been the freedom to play Scrabble with my Mom and any other Scrabble player she can con into playing with her. (My Mom does not need to con anyone into doing anything with her.  That is just a joke, Mom.  Honest.)  Especially, my Aunt, Sister A.  She may be a nun but she's wicked with those tiles.  And when my sister, H, comes to visit from the Gulf, I just give up any hope of winning and enjoy the play.

So when I read about Meg Wolitzer's novel for young teens, The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman, I found out it was about Scrabble!  Well, it went to the top of my list of Books I want to Read!  And I read it.  And it does Scrabble proud.

Duncan has just moved with his single mother, his only parent since his Dad died before he was born, back to the town she grew up in.  So, he's the new kid, not an enviable position in middle school.  But right before school starts, he discovers he has a special power.  His mother begs him to keep this "talent" quiet.  She seems very very concerned to keep a low profile.  Only his Great-Aunt offers Duncan any encouragement. 

I admired Duncan's restraint.  I personally would have shown that Talent to the first two dozen people I met.  Duncan doesn't show it to the other new kid, Andrew, for several weeks.  But when he does display his "powers", the captain of the Scrabble team, Carl, decides that Duncan and his weird power will be the perfect partner to help Carl win the Youth Scrabble Tournament in Florida.

Duncan and bossy, rich brat Carl, are only two of the great young Scrabble players in this book.  There are the girls from Oregon, immersed in Scrabble for years but also trying to find a mysterious boy.  There's skateboarding Nate from NYC, whose father came in second at the YST when he was a kid.  Some of the kids are Scrabble insiders like the Oregonzas and Carl himself.  Others like Duncan and Nate have been dragged into Scrabble to please other people.

It just might be letters on a board, people, but this Scrabble tournament is full of drama, mystery and sudden revelations, as well as a hijacking in a second rate theme park.  And for dilettantes like myself there is a LOT of Scrabble stuff I never even heard about.  Oh yeah, watch out H and Sister A.,  Duncan Dorfman and I will bring you down!  (And M on the West Coast, expect a Scrabble throwdown next time we meet.)