Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

I like books that get into the heads of characters; I like understanding what makes people tick, what makes them think the way they think, or act one way while someone with similar experience acts in the opposite. So when I saw Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult at the airport recently, I picked it up. I'd heard from more than a few kids my daughters' age group that Picoult has a real flair for understanding their generation. And after closing the cover on a gripping but terrifying read, I have to agree.

Ten students are gunned down in nineteen minutes in small-town U.S.A. Picoult's fictional account makes it clear that she gets exactly how such a tragedy might happen and why. She gets teenagers. Frankly, she gets adults too. She uses a multi-narrative approach to personalize what leads up to those terrible high school shootings that we read about in the papers. She exposes the terror that a little boy getting on a school bus feels every morning wondering what the kids who sit at the back are going to do to him today. We see that same little boy shrink further and further into himself, trying to make himself small enough that his tormentors won't notice him. With what he's experienced, it's easy to see how taking refuge in an artificial computer gaming world where he is the one in charge can warp him. Meanwhile, it's just as easy to sympathize with his parents initial protection and then blind hope that things are better even while it is clear that they are not. We even understand why his childhood friend take sides with his tormentors rather than risk remaining on the outside. Still, Picoult's characters are complex; even a boy like this can still hope for love. Even a girl who betrays her best friend might rethink her actions. By the time that small flame of hope is crushed though, we are afraid of what this last blow will unleash. Of course, the inevitable occurs; a trail of violence that few will be able to forget or forgive is the result. Wisely, Picoult doesn't stop with forgetting or forgiving though. She pushes us to understand despite the bewilderment and anguish that follow such an event. Nineteen Minutes is a work of fiction but Pictoult's fiction is wrapped in the fabric of a truth so real that it will make your heart ache. The question is, will it also open your eyes?

Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy by Ally Carter

Good news; the second teen spy school novel by Ally Carter has hit book stores, although still in hardcover. I couldn't resist, and made the mistake of cracking the cover when I should have been working which can be translated as no work got done the rest of that day! It was unputdownable. I know...I know. Stop making up words Sheryl!

But seriously, Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy was just as much fun as the first. The opening finds Cammie Morgan, girl-spy-in-training, back at school after the summer break along with her genius, code-cracking friends. Cammie is still recovering from the loss of her first boyfriend who had to be brainwashed into forgetting about the mission he interrupted in a heroic attempt to save her. While she settles into school and ponders if her ex will even remember her name, she notices that her mother, who happens to be the head of the spy school, is acting awfully strange. But, Cammie barely has time to figure out why before she is blamed for a security breach that puts her top secret school at risk. While trying to clear her name, she overhears her mother and one of the other teachers discussing "Blackthorne," which Cammie figures must be a code name for some mysterious covert op. Soon she and her friends are crawling through walls and surveilling the school to uncover the truth. What they discover will turn their world upside down and send them on a wild ride that you won't want to miss. Once you've finished Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy, you, like me, will only be hoping that Ms. Carter has the third in the series is well under way.

Yikes

Yikes. I can't believe that I haven't posted since the week before Easter. I meant to get one more post in but ran out of time. Since I've returned, I've been getting a project ready for a screen writers workshop I'm taking this weekend. Wish me luck. I'm heading out there shortly.

Something new coming next week. I promise. I have two books I want to talk about. Later. Sheryl

Arthur C. Clarke

I was checking out the NY Times this morning and read that Arthur C. Clarke has died. A visionary who penned close to 100 books, I have been reading Clarke for as long as I can remember. Not surprisingly, he was in the middle of another novel. If you haven't read him, or seen the film classic "2001: A Space Odyssey" (based on his novel of the same name) by the equally great Stanley Kubrick, you are missing something special.

Coming soon

Apologies for those niggling little mistakes in the Alfred Kropp post. One of the things I hate about this blog is that my editor isn't keeping me in check. (That's a hint Ann, in case you happen to read this!) Ann Featherstone, like other great editors is one of the unsung heroes of the book business.

So, coming up later this week (I really do have to do get that novel finished!) is Cross my Heart and Hope to Spy by Ally Carter. I've already reviewed her first book which was totally awesome. Scroll down the author menu to your right to refresh your memory. More coming soon. Sheryl

Alfred Kropp series by Rick Yancey

If you’ve been looking for an action packed adventure series with a hint of magic and serious boy appeal for grades 7 and up, look no further than Rick Yancey’s Alfred Kropp series.

Readers will be immediately drawn into Alfred’s extraordinary and somewhat haphazard adventures right from page one of The Exraordinary Adventures of Aldred Kropp. And what adventures! It all starts with Alfred stealing an old sword at his uncle’s insistence. The sword turns out to be the legendary Excalibur (of Arthurian fame) and it falls into the hands of the evil descendant of one of the original Knights of the Roundtable. Feeling responsible, Alfred tries to get the sword back, with the help from another modern day knight. They get the help of a mysterious international organization with serious firepower. Car chases, sword fights, and being falsely labeled an international terrorist make this a page-turner. Alfred’s bumbling but ultimately heroic sense of responsibility makes this accidental hero endearingly likable. The fact that he saves the world is a bonus.

However, the bigger bonus is that there is another Alfred Kropp adventure to crack open, Alfred Kropp: The Seal of Solomon. In the capable hands of Yancey, this second adventure is as wild a ride as the first. It’s just as funny, and Alfred is even more lovable if that’s at all possible. It features an extraction (Alfred getting kidnapped from his not very likable foster parents house), betrayal, magical life-saving blood, jumping out of parachutes, seriously scary demons, rogue agents and yes, a plan to save the world.

More good news is that a third title in the series is about to hit the stores, Alfred Kropp: The Thirteenth Skull. Just having finished the advanced proof, I confess that I couldn’t put it down. This time Alfred himself is the target. After a close call in which his guardian is gravely injured, Alfred chases the culprit responsible. He ends up being falsely arrested for murder and his explanation lands him in a psychiatric hospital. It seems that no one believes he has twice saved the world, that he’s on his second life, and that his blood has magical healing powers. He manages to bargain an escape only to land into more hot water (actually snow and ice in Alfred’s case). With bad guys tracking him at ever turn, and no one to trust, Alfred searches for an honorable way to end the standoff, and survive. You guessed it; it’s another page-turner!

**A word of caution for the squeamish; if blood and gore make you queasy, give this series a pass. Personally, I loved all three and await book 4.

the Absoluely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Pick up The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie at your peril. Once you meet 14 year old Junior Spirit who is as smart and artistic as he is medically challenged, once you meet his parents and his sister Mary Runs Away, once you get to know his best friend the fiercely protective Rowdy, once you enter the Spokane Indian Reservation and you experience the grinding poverty, the alcoholism, and an indestructible sense of Indian identity that has survived despite all the effort white men have put into pulverizing it, you will be hooked.

Junior Spirit, an off-beat, smart 14-year-old budding Indian cartoonist, makes a decision that changes his life and the lives of those around him when he decides to leave the Rez school for the sake of getting a good education. Accused of being an apple (red on the outside and white on the inside), he expects beatings, abuse and loneliness both on and off the Rez. What he doesn't expect is to find the sort of inner strength that his grandmother might be proud of had she not been killed in a hit and run by a drunken Indian. Nor does he expect to outplay his former best friend on the basketball court or to discover that he would always love and miss his best friend, his reservation and his tribe.

In the hands of a less able author, Junior's experience at the all-white school whose only other Indian is the school mascot, might have been predictable. But the integrity, honesty, insecurities and wit Spirit displays even in the face of terrible tragedy make you want to root for him when he is heaving before a basketball game or trying to hide an inappropriate boner.

This heartbreakingly honest and wildly funny story is possibly one of the best coming of age novels written since Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. The Absolutely True diary of a Part-Time Indian is Sherman Alexie's first foray into the YA world. I so hope he decides to give us more.