Discussion: Random Rambles About That Time I Read All Of The Printz Award Winners

Feed Your Fiction Addiction and It Starts At Midnight host the 2016 Discussion Challenge.

Last year, I decided that I wanted to read the entire backlist of a literary award. It took me a few weeks to choose which award because most of them didn’t interest me. Some of the well-known awards have been around for so long that it would take me the rest of my life to read all of the winners. I decided on the Printz Award because it has only been around since 2000, and most of the winners sounded intriguing. I started reading the winners in October 2015 and finished in January 2016.

The American Library Association gives the Michael L. Printz Award to the year’s “best book written for teens, based entirely on its literary merit.” The Printz Award is the young adult equivalent of the Newbery. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and anthologies are all eligible to win.

These are all of the winners. Click the titles to see my reviews.

Monster - Walter Dean Myers (2000)

Kit’s Wilderness - David Almond (2001)

A Step From Heaven - An Na (2002)

Postcards From No Man’s Land - Aidan Chambers (2003)

The First Part Last - Angela Johnson (2004)

How I Live Now - Meg Rosoff (2005)

Looking For Alaska - John Green (2006)

American Born Chinese - Gene Luen Yang (2007)

The White Darkness - Geraldine McCaughrean (2008)

Jellicoe Road - Melina Marchetta (2009)

Going Bovine - Libba Bray (2010)

Ship Breaker - Paolo Bacigalupi (2011)

Where Things Come Back - John Corey Whaley (2012)

In Darkness - Nick Lake (2013)

Midwinterblood - Marcus Sedgwick (2014)

I’ll Give You The Sun - Jandy Nelson (2015)

Bone Gap - Laura Ruby (2016)

I kept notes while I was reading these books, but I can’t come up with a way to organize them into a coherent and insightful post. So here are my random rambles about the Printz Award winners.

1. These books are ridiculously well-written. I love YA, but I’ll admit that the genre isn’t famous for its brilliant writing. Most of the YA books I’ve read have been fairly bland in the writing department. That’s not the case with these books. All of the winning authors have unique and distinctive ways of using language. If you want to learn how to write fiction, I’d suggest reading these books.

2. Reading an award backlist is a great way to discover new authors. I had heard of most of the winning authors, but not all of them. One author I discovered through reading the winners is Marcus Sedgwick. I think his book, Midwinterblood, was made just for me. It has everything I want in a book. I had never heard of that novel before looking at the award list. Now I want to read everything that Marcus Sedgwick has written.

3. Reading an award backlist got me (slightly) out of my comfort zone. I’m comfortable with reading YA, but some of these books I would have never picked up on my own. Getting out of my comfort zone helped me discover what I like and dislike in books.

4. Who is the Printz Award for? Who is the target audience for literary awards? I liked reading the winners, but I found myself wondering about this a lot. Who are the judges picking the winners for? If the judges are choosing the “best” YA books, you’d think they would be picking books that teens like, but I couldn’t imagine myself reading some of these books as a teen. I wouldn’t have had the patience for them. Some of the books remind me of the type of stuff that I was forced to read in high school English class. English class books were good for my brain but boring as hell. So is this award meant for teens, or educators, or librarians, or what?

5. I once heard that the goal of literary awards is to bring attention to overlooked books. That’s a goal that I would like to support. I haven’t seen many of the Printz Award books reviewed on blogs. Some of them definitely deserve more hype. I hope my reviews helped bring love to amazing under-hyped books.

6. I liked most of the winners. There were three winners that I didn’t like, a few that I felt “Meh” about, and a bunch that I fangirled over. I haven’t read all of the runners-up, but I think the award committee did a nice job of picking the winners.

7. Which winners were my favorites? Definitely Midwinterblood. Some other memorable ones are How I Live Now, Looking for Alaska, The White Darkness, and I’ll Give You the Sun.

8. I want to do this again. I want to read another award backlist. The Man Booker International Prize was reconfigured this year, so I might try to keep up with those winners. I’m also interested in the Iowa Short Fiction Award, but that award has been around since 1969. I don’t think I could read all of the winners. Do you have any suggestions for me?

Do you read award winners or pay attention to literary awards?

Printz Review: Bone Gap – Laura Ruby

Bone Gap – Laura Ruby

Everyone knows Bone Gap is full of gaps—gaps to trip you up, gaps to slide through so you can disappear forever. So when young, beautiful Roza went missing, the people of Bone Gap weren’t surprised. After all, it wasn’t the first time that someone had slipped away and left Finn and Sean O’Sullivan on their own. Just a few years before, their mother had high-tailed it to Oregon for a brand new guy, a brand new life. That’s just how things go, the people said. Who are you going to blame? 

Finn knows that’s not what happened with Roza. He knows she was kidnapped, ripped from the cornfields by a dangerous man whose face he cannot remember. But the searches turned up nothing, and no one believes him anymore. Not even Sean, who has more reason to find Roza than anyone, and every reason to blame Finn for letting her go.

Review: First, this book gets bonus points for referencing Blankets, which is a beautiful graphic novel that everyone needs to read. Seriously, I love that book.

Okay, in this book, Finn lives with his older brother, Sean, and Sean’s girlfriend, Roza in a rural town called Bone Gap. When Roza goes missing, everyone assumes that she left town just as mysteriously as she arrived. Only Finn knows that Roza didn’t leave willingly. He saw a strange man force her into a car, but Finn is unable to give a good description of the man. Finn has always been a little strange, so the townspeople think he is lying about the kidnapping.

I love the main characters. This book doesn’t have an action-packed plot, but I never got bored because I was so invested in the characters. Finn is a sweet boy who doesn’t quite fit in. He has a hard time relating to people. He rarely makes eye contact with anyone, and he always seems a little “spacy.” This book has multiple perspectives, and Finn’s is my favorite. I like the unusual way he looks at the world.

Roza is another wonderful character. She’s a Polish immigrant who’s on the run from a mysterious stranger. The reader gets to see parts of her life in Poland and parts of her life after she’s kidnapped. Her chapters are slightly confusing, but they’re confusing in an intriguing way.

Sean is my second-favorite character (after Finn). I feel bad for him. He had to give up his dream of becoming a doctor after his mother left him to take care of his younger brother. He’s bitter about the things that have happened to him in his life.

Even though the characters are brilliant, I have issues with the rest of the book. I wish the magical realism elements had been more developed and more integrated into the story. This book doesn’t really feel like magical realism to me. It feels more like a contemporary book where some conveniently weird stuff happens. I like most of the book, but I’m not a huge fan of the fantasy-ish ending. It just got too weird too fast.

I also wish that the book had included more information about the villain. When I first read the novel, I wasn't entirely sure who—or what—the villain was, but I wanted to know. I knew that his identity had to do with mythology, but I don’t know very much about mythology, so I had to rely on Google to help me out. I feel like I missed a lot of this story because I don't have a strong background in mythology.

I have some problems with this book, but I’m still glad I read it. It’s a well-written story about small-town gossip, beauty, and bravery. It’s worth reading for the great characters.

Printz Review: I’ll Give You The Sun – Jandy Nelson

I’ll Give You The Sun – Jandy Nelson

Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone else—an even more unpredictable new force in her life. The early years are Noah's story to tell. The later years are Jude's. What the twins don't realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they’d have a chance to remake their world.

Review: Twins Noah and Jude were best friends until competitive relationships and sibling rivalry tore them apart. Now, at age sixteen, they barely interact. When long-buried family secrets start coming out, the twins realize how much they need each other.

This book has some of the best characters I’ve read in a long time. They are all so distinct and well-developed. I really felt like I knew them. They have such big personalities. Noah is my favorite. He’s sweet and introverted and very easy to relate to. The writing style does an amazing job of conveying the characters’ personalities. Noah and Jude are both artists, and they have an artistic way of looking at the world. The writing style is a bit abstract and very interesting to read.

My favorite part of the book is the rivalry between the siblings. Anyone who has a sibling can relate to the insecurity of not knowing if you are as talented or as loved as your sibling. Noah and Jude’s relationship is realistic. They love each other, but they are also highly competitive. They both want to get accepted to the same art school, and they are both interested in the same boy. Jude and Noah love each other, but they can be viciously competitive. The rivalry leads the twins to radically change their personalities instead of being true to themselves.    

I also really like the structure of this book. Noah narrates the parts of the story that happen when the twins are 13, and Jude narrates the parts that happen when they are 16. Their relationship changes so much in 3 years that the structure creates a lot of suspense. I needed to keep reading because I wanted to know how their relationship fell apart.

I did have a few issues with the book. I found Noah’s chapters much more interesting than Jude’s. Noah’s chapters seem faster-paced and have more going on. I think Jude’s chapters lag a little. She spends a lot of time talking to herself and her dead relatives and doesn’t seem to do very much. I know that this behavior is true to her character, but I was always eager to get back to Noah’s chapters.

I’m also not the biggest fan of Jude’s love interest, Oscar. He doesn’t feel as realistic to me as the other characters. He’s a stereotypical hot teenage guy. He’s a model with a sexy accent, a motorcycle, and a tragic past that only Jude can truly understand. It’s all too over-the-top for me.

Those are fairly minor criticisms. I enjoyed this book, and I’m looking forward to reading Jandy Nelson’s other young adult novel.

Printz Review: Midwinterblood – Marcus Sedgwick

Midwinterblood – Marcus Sedgwick

Seven stories of passion and love separated by centuries but mysteriously intertwined—this is a tale of horror and beauty, tenderness and sacrifice. 

In 2073 on the remote and secretive island of Blessed, where rumor has it that no one ages and no children are born, a visiting journalist, Eric Seven, and a young local woman known as Merle are ritually slain. Their deaths echo a moment ten centuries before, when, in the dark of the moon, a king was slain, tragically torn from his queen. Their souls search to be reunited, and as mother and son, artist and child, forbidden lovers, and victims of a vampire they come close to finding what they've lost. 

In a novel comprising seven parts, each influenced by a moon—the flower moon, the harvest moon, the hunter's moon, the blood moon—this is the story of Eric and Merle, whose souls have been searching for each other since their untimely parting.

Review: Have you ever gotten the feeling that a book was written specifically for you? Like, if you made a list of everything you love in a book, this one book could check everything off the list?

I think Midwinterblood is that book for me. It seriously has everything I want: a remote setting, a lot of death, history, elements of traditional ghost stories, unusual religions, a complex plot, excellent writing, and a whole lot of creepy weirdness. It’s even a composite novel, so it’s structurally interesting. I had planned on reading a few chapters before bed one night, and I ended up staying awake all night to read this. It’s a beautiful book and a new favorite.

Midwinterblood is about a Scandinavian island where the residents get reincarnated in different forms every time they die. It focuses on two souls, Eric and Merle, who search for each other in every life. Sometimes they are lovers, sometimes they are siblings, sometimes one is much older than the other, sometimes they aren’t even human. The novel is told in 7 parts and moves backwards. It starts in 2073 and ends before the time of the Vikings.

I love the way that the stories are linked together. There are a lot of reoccurring images and themes. The book starts out mysterious, but everything comes full-circle in the end. I liked the suspense of not knowing how Eric and Merle would connect in each story. In some stories, they’re together right away, but in others, it takes a while for their paths to cross. I loved trying to figure out the connections.

I know that this is a short review, but I really think this book is best if you don’t know much about it before you start reading. The plot is so intricate that everything I want to rave about is a spoiler. I guess I can say that my favorite section of the book is “The Archaeologist.” A team of archaeologists excavate the ancient mounds on the island and meet a strange boy who knows a lot but can’t communicate very well.

I’ve seen this book labeled as horror, but it’s more eerie than scary. It probably won’t give you nightmares. If you like weird books, you need to read this one. Immediately.*

*There’s a free chapter sampler on the publisher’s website, so you have no excuse not to start reading it immediately.

Printz Review: In Darkness – Nick Lake

In Darkness – Nick Lake

In darkness I count my blessings like Manman taught me. One: I am alive. Two: there is no two. In the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, a boy is trapped beneath the rubble of a ruined hospital: thirsty, terrified and alone. 'Shorty' is a child of the slums, a teenage boy who has seen enough violence to last a lifetime, and who has been inexorably drawn into the world of the gangsters who rule Site Soleil: men who dole out money with one hand and death with the other. But Shorty has a secret: a flame of revenge that blazes inside him and a burning wish to find the twin sister he lost five years ago. And he is marked. Marked in a way that links him with Toussaint L'Ouverture, the Haitian rebel who two-hundred years ago led the slave revolt and faced down Napoleon to force the French out of Haiti. As he grows weaker, Shorty relives the journey that took him to the hospital, a bullet wound in his arm. In his visions and memories he hopes to find the strength to survive, and perhaps then Toussaint can find a way to be free.

Review: I always seem to have the same problem with duel-narrative books. I like one storyline more than the other.

In Darkness is about a teenage gang member nicknamed Shorty. After he is shot in the arm, he’s taken to a hospital, but an earthquake causes the hospital to collapse on top of him. While trapped in the rubble, he starts dreaming about Toussaint L'Ouverture, the slave who led a revolt and freed Haiti two-hundred years ago. There seems to be a psychic link between Shorty and Toussaint L'Ouverture. The book flips back and forth between Shorty’s story and Toussaint’s.

I was drawn to this novel because it’s set in Haiti, which isn’t a place that I know very much about. This book is a great introduction to Haiti’s history and present. Even though the book is fiction (mostly), it feels very gritty and real. Shorty is a gangster who committed his first murder at age 12, but he’s still weirdly relatable. He loves his family and is doing whatever it takes to survive in one of the most dangerous slums on Earth.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that this book is gritty. The author isn’t afraid to talk about murder, extreme poverty, gang culture, racism, or drug use. It’s an honest book. Shorty doesn’t hide anything from the reader. He doesn’t even hide some of the disgusting things he has to do to survive while trapped under the collapsed hospital. Sometimes this book made me cringe.

I like historical fiction because it’s (usually) a palatable way to learn history, but I didn’t like Toussaint’s story nearly as much as I liked Shorty’s. Toussaint’s story lacked the depth of Shorty’s. The parts of the book that happened two-hundred years ago didn’t feel as real to me.

I also wondered about this book’s classification as a young adult novel. I’m an adult, and I liked this story, but teenage-me wouldn’t have read this book willingly. It’s denser than most YA novels I’ve read. There are a lot of characters with complicated backstories. There is also a mixture of different languages with no translations, a lot of exposition, a complex nonlinear structure, slow pacing, and not much dialogue. As an adult, I can appreciate the beauty in those things, but teenage-me definitely wouldn’t have had the patience for this book.

If you’re interested in Haiti or unique historical fiction, In Darkness is probably worth checking out.

Printz Review: Where Things Come Back – John Corey Whaley

Where Things Come Back – John Corey Whaley

Just when seventeen-year-old Cullen Witter thinks he understands everything about his small and painfully dull Arkansas town, it all disappears. . . .

In the summer before Cullen's senior year, a nominally-depressed birdwatcher named John Barling thinks he spots a species of woodpecker thought to be extinct since the 1940s in Lily, Arkansas. His rediscovery of the so-called Lazarus Woodpecker sparks a flurry of press and woodpecker-mania. Soon all the kids are getting woodpecker haircuts and everyone's eating "Lazarus burgers." But as absurd as the town's carnival atmosphere has become, nothing is more startling than the realization that Cullen’s sensitive, gifted fifteen-year-old brother Gabriel has suddenly and inexplicably disappeared.

While Cullen navigates his way through a summer of finding and losing love, holding his fragile family together, and muddling his way into adulthood, a young missionary in Africa, who has lost his faith, is searching for any semblance of meaning wherever he can find it. As distant as the two stories seem at the start, they are thoughtfully woven ever closer together and through masterful plotting, brought face-to-face in a surprising and harrowing climax.

Review: I don’t think I got along with this book very well. It’s definitely not a bad book, but I don’t think it’s my kind of thing.

This book has four plotlines that come together at the end. In the first story, seventeen-year-old Cullen’s brother goes missing, and his family starts to fall apart.

In a second plotline, a birdwatcher thinks he spotted an extinct species of woodpecker in Cullen’s town. The town is flooded by tourists looking for the bird.

In the third plotline, two religious college students learn about a little-known book of the Bible. The information they discover changes the course of both their lives.

In another plotline, a girl who graduated from Cullen’s high school comes back to their small town after a failed relationship.

The plotlines converge slowly, which I really liked. At first, the plots seem to have nothing to do with each other, but as the book goes on, they come closer and closer together. Eventually, the way that the stories were related clicked in my mind. I needed to keep reading to find out if I was right. I liked the last 50 pages of the book much better than the rest of it. The story starts moving fast when the plotlines come together. I sped through the ending because I wanted to find out if Cullen got his brother back.

The writing style is the biggest reason that I struggled with this book. The best way that I can describe it is “detached.” The detachment does help avoid melodrama (which is great), but I never felt close to the characters. I was interested in the mystery of Cullen’s brother’s disappearance, but I didn’t really care about the outcome of the mystery because I couldn’t connect with anyone involved in it.

I also struggled with Cullen’s narration style. It starts to feel repetitive as the book goes on. He often talks about himself in third person and has elaborate fantasies. Some of the fantasies are about killing zombies. I understand how the zombies tie in to the theme (zombies are “things that come back”), but I think the fantasies take up too much of the book. I was tempted to skim a lot of the parts that are about Cullen’s imagination.

Other than the ending, there is one other part of the book that I really like. At one point, Cullen’s family hires a psychic to find his missing brother. The family members’ mixed reactions to the psychic feel realistic. Some family members want to give the psychic a chance, and others roll their eyes, but they are all very invested in what the psychic says.

Overall, this book wasn’t for me, but there are parts of it that I really liked.

Printz Review: Ship Breaker - Paolo Bacigalupi

Ship Breaker - Paolo Bacigalupi

In America's Gulf Coast region, grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts by crews of young people. Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota—and hopefully live to see another day. But when, by luck or by chance, he discovers an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: Strip the ship for all it's worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life . . . .

Review: A YA dystopia with minimal romance—I liked this book before I started reading. It also gets bonus points for not being a one-teenager-must-save-the-world dystopia. Nailer just wants to stay alive.

Nailer lives in America’s flooded Gulf Coast and has a job stripping old ships of their valuable metals. The work is hard and dangerous, and he doesn’t make enough money to get himself and his drug-addicted father out of poverty. After a hurricane, Nailer finds a clipper ship washed up near the shore of an island. He could strip the ship and sell the metal himself, or he could rescue the ship’s only survivor and maybe get a reward for returning her and the ship to her wealthy family. He has to make a decision quickly, or he could lose the ship, the survivor, and possibly his life to the other ship breakers.

The characters’ culture is so well-developed in this book. They have their own slang, their own religions, their own ethical codes. Their culture is interesting to read about because it’s close enough to ours to be understandable, but it’s still strange and unpredictable. “Ship breaking” is also a job I’ve never seen before in fiction, so it’s unique.

Like all good dystopias, this one tackles a lot of society’s issues. It’s about racism, classism, workers’ rights, and environmental damage. I think the book does a very good job of showing these issues without being preachy about them. The characters work in inhumane conditions and live in shacks on the beach. They’d do anything to get a better life for themselves, including murder. Some of them will even murder their own family members. None of the characters can be trusted because they’ll kill each other for the opportunity to make money. I love not knowing who to trust in a dystopia.

I’ve read a lot of dystopias, and there are a few things about this one that bother me. First, the characters are kind of flat. I didn’t learn enough about them to connect with them or really care about them. The book also took a while to grab my attention, and it felt slow in the middle. Luckily, the ending is great. It’s action-packed and deadly, which is exactly what I wanted.

I haven’t decided if I want to read the companion novel, but this one was pretty enjoyable.

Printz Review: Going Bovine – Libba Bray

Going Bovine – Libba Bray

All 16-year-old Cameron wants is to get through high school—and life in general—with a minimum of effort. It’s not a lot to ask. But that’s before he’s given some bad news: he’s sick and he’s going to die. Which totally sucks. Hope arrives in the winged form of Dulcie, a loopy punk angel/possible hallucination with a bad sugar habit. She tells Cam there is a cure—if he’s willing to go in search of it. With the help of a death-obsessed, video-gaming dwarf and a yard gnome, Cam sets off on the mother of all road trips through a twisted America into the heart of what matters most.

Review: It took me forever to write this review because I needed a long time to process this book. It’s definitely one of the strangest things I’ve read.

Cameron is a normal teenager until he starts to hallucinate and lose control of his muscles. He is diagnosed with mad cow disease and told that he is going to die. As the disease eats away at his brain and he is confined to a hospital bed, he goes on a hallucinated journey across America. Along the way, he encounters giants made of fire, a happiness cult that believes everything can be cured with vanilla smoothies, a Norse god trapped in the body of a yard gnome, and a lot of excited college kids on spring break.

I have mixed feelings about this book. Despite its depressing subject, it’s very funny. I enjoyed seeing how different parts of Cameron’s life show up in his hallucinations. There were several scenes where I laughed out loud. On the other hand, the book is very weird. There were a lot of moments where I stopped reading and said, “Really? This is happening now? Really?” Ultimately, the book was a little too weird for me. I got frustrated with it at some points, and it took me a long time to read because it didn’t always hold my attention.

I also think the book could have been much shorter. The copy I read is almost 500 pages. It’s painfully obvious where in America Cameron’s journey is going to end. I just wanted him to get there.

There are some awesome elements of this novel. The characters are very diverse. Cameron is realistic, funny, and relatable. I also really like the ending. I don’t want to give away spoilers, but I didn’t think the author would be brave enough to end it that way. The ending is both devastating and hopeful. After all the fantastical stuff that happens in the story, I’m glad that it ends in a realistic way.

The themes are the best part of the novel. This book is about not waiting to live your life. You never know how long your life will be, so go on as many crazy adventures as you can before it’s over.

I didn’t love this book, but if you have a really high tolerance for weirdness, it’s worth checking out.

Printz Review: Jellicoe Road – Melina Marchetta

Jellicoe Road – Melina Marchetta

At age eleven, Taylor Markham was abandoned by her mother. At fourteen, she ran away from boarding school, only to be tracked down and brought back by a mysterious stranger. Now seventeen, Taylor's the reluctant leader of her school's underground community, whose annual territory war with the Townies and visiting Cadets has just begun. This year, though, the Cadets are led by Jonah Griggs, and Taylor can't avoid his intense gaze for long. To make matters worse, Hannah, the one adult Taylor trusts, has disappeared. But if Taylor can piece together the clues Hannah left behind, the truth she uncovers might not just settle her past, but also change her future.

Review: This book has phenomenal reviews on Goodreads, so I guess I’m in the minority for not loving it.

Seventeen-year-old Taylor is the leader of the secret “territory wars” that happen every year between the students at her boarding school, the teenagers in the nearby town, and the Cadets who camp near the school’s campus. When Taylor’s guardian, Hannah, goes missing, Taylor starts reading the manuscript that Hannah left behind. As she puts together the clues in the manuscript, she discovers her own history and the history of the territory wars.

There are a few elements of this book that I really like. First, it’s set in rural Australia, which isn’t a setting I’ve seen very often before. I also like the slow way that the pieces of Taylor’s life fall into place. The book starts out confusing because there are so many mysteries, but they are all solved by the end. I enjoyed trying to put the pieces together as Taylor uncovered more and more information. This novel is also very well-written, and I’d love to read more of Melina Marchetta’s work.

Maybe I’m too old for this book. I think teenage-me would have appreciated it more than twenties-me. I struggled with this novel because Taylor’s angst got on my nerves. The beginning of this book is so mysterious that it’s confusing, and I didn’t understand why Taylor was so overdramatic about everything. Even after finishing the book, I didn’t think she needed to be so angsty. I was constantly annoyed at her.

Most of the book focuses on the territory wars, which I may be too old to find interesting. The territory wars are a game that the teenagers play. They invade each other’s territory, take hostages, and negotiate for land around the school campus. Sometimes the players take the game too seriously, and somebody gets hurt. I found the territory wars childishly pointless. I think I would have liked the book a lot more if the wars had taken up less space. I considered giving up on the book several times because I just couldn’t get invested in the wargames story.

Finally, I wondered why Taylor’s past is a mystery at all. Why couldn’t the adults in her life just act like adults and talk to her about her parents? Why does her family history have to be a deep, dark secret? I don’t get it.

The lesson that I’m taking away from this book is “use your words.” A lot of angst can be prevented if people just talk to each other.

Printz Review: The White Darkness – Geraldine McCaughrean

The White Darkness – Geraldine McCaughrean

I have been in love with Titus Oates for quite a while now—which is ridiculous, since he's been dead for ninety years. But look at it this way. In ninety years I'll be dead, too, and the age difference won't matter. 

Sym is not your average teenage girl. She is obsessed with the Antarctic and the brave, romantic figure of Captain Oates from Scott's doomed expedition to the South Pole. In fact, Oates is the secret confidant to whom she spills all her hopes and fears. 

But Sym's Uncle Victor is even more obsessed—and when he takes her on a dream trip into the bleak Antarctic wilderness, it turns into a nightmarish struggle for survival that will challenge everything she knows and loves.

Review: This book reminds me of my childhood. When I was around the age of the main character, Sym, I also had an obsession with Antarctica. Just like Sym, I had a shelf full of “ice books.” I read everything I could about Scott’s failed attempt to reach the South Pole in the early 1900s. Also like Sym, I was more comfortable with my imagination than with real people. It’s eerie to find a fictional character who is so similar to fourteen-year-old me.

Sym is obsessed with Antarctica, so she is thrilled when her uncle takes her on a surprise trip to this frozen wasteland. What she doesn’t know is that her uncle also has an obsession. He believes that there is a hole in Antarctica that leads to the center of the Earth. He’ll do anything to find the hole, even if it puts Sym’s life in danger. Once in Antarctica, the only person who Sym can fully trust is her imaginary boyfriend, Titus Oates.

This book is intense and beautifully written. It’s a survival story with amazing descriptions of Antarctica. You’re never sure which characters to trust because they all have selfish motives for being so far from home. They’ll even resort to murder to get what they want. By the end of the book, you can’t even trust Sym because the cold and sensory deprivation of Antarctica makes her hallucinate. I couldn’t stop reading this story. I had to find out how Sym would survive.

Sym is a slightly frustrating character because she’s very naïve, and the other characters manipulate her easily, but she’s still a realistic fourteen-year-old. She’s hearing-impaired and not comfortable with herself or her body. A lot of teenagers could probably relate to her.

My second-favorite character—after Sym—is Titus. The concept of an imaginary boyfriend is awesome. I haven’t read many books about characters who have imaginary friends. Titus has a dry sense of humor and jokes about his own death. He gives Sym the courage to keep going whenever she wants to give up.

I like Sym and Titus, but a few of the other characters are over-the-top. They’re a little cartoonish and unrealistic. I especially feel this way about Uncle Victor. I liked him more at the end of the book than at the beginning, but he still doesn’t seem like a real person. He’s a caricature of a mad scientist.

My only other criticism is about the pacing. The book gets repetitive in the middle because Sym spends a lot of time wandering aimlessly around Antarctica. I think the book could have been shorter. The repetitiveness makes it lose some of its intensity.

The relationship between Sym and Titus is intriguing, and the setting of this book is one of the more interesting settings I’ve come across in young adult fiction. If you like survival stories, you’ll probably enjoy The White Darkness. 

 

Printz Review: American Born Chinese – Gene Luen Yang

American Born Chinese – Gene Luen Yang

Jin Wang starts at a new school where he's the only Chinese-American student. When a boy from Taiwan joins his class, Jin doesn't want to be associated with a FOB like him. Jin just wants to be an all-American boy because he's in love with an all-American girl. Danny is an all-American boy: great at basketball, popular with the girls. But his obnoxious Chinese cousin Chin-Kee's annual visit is such a disaster that it ruins Danny's reputation at school. The Monkey King has lived for thousands of years and mastered the arts of kung fu and the heavenly disciplines. He's ready to join the ranks of the immortal gods in heaven. But there's no place in heaven for a monkey. Each of these characters cannot help himself alone, but how can they possibly help each other? They're going to have to find a way—if they want to fix the disasters their lives have become.

                                                               

Review: I’m not sure how to review this book because it’s the only graphic novel I’ve ever read. I have nothing to compare it against.

American Born Chinese tells three intersecting stories. One is about a monkey who attempts to become a god. The second is about a Chinese-American boy who wants to be more American. The third is about an American boy with an obnoxious Chinese cousin. The three stories come together in a surprising way at the end.

My favorite of the storylines is the one about Jin Wang, a boy who is trying to be more American. Even if you aren’t an immigrant, it’s easy to relate to Jin Wang. Everybody has something about themselves that they wish they could change. Also, he looks adorable with his perm.

This story works perfectly as a graphic novel because the pictures add a lot of humor. The book is about learning how to accept yourself as you are. I think the message would have been heavy-handed in a regular novel, but the funny pictures keep the book from being preachy. It’s done very well.

I love the ending. I knew that the stories would intertwine eventually, but I never expected it to end like that.

This is a great book for kids (and adults). The art is colorful, humorous, and easy to follow. The stories are simple but meaningful. The book shows the harm of stereotyping and the importance of being yourself. More people need to read it.

Printz Review: Looking for Alaska – John Green

Looking for Alaska – John Green

Before. Miles "Pudge" Halter's whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the "Great Perhaps" (François Rabelais, poet) even more. He heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed-up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young, who is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. 

After. Nothing is ever the same.

Review: You guys know what this book is about, right? A teenager nicknamed Pudge goes to boarding school and becomes infatuated with a girl named Alaska. Pretty much everyone I know has read and reviewed this book. I’m not sure what to say about it that hasn’t already been said.

I don’t usually reread books, but I’ve read this one three times in the past few years. On the surface, it doesn’t seem like the type of book I’d love. In fact, it has five things that I usually hate in books:

1. Excessive use of interabangs. This is possibly the most useless punctuation mark in the English language. Why does it exist?

2. High school pranks. Seriously, pranks were stupid and juvenile when I was in high school. As an adult, I don’t care to read about them.

3. Obnoxious characters. Alaska . . . just . . . ug. I do not like her. At all. Not even a little.

4. Believability issues. That final prank could have been foiled by a Google search. I think the prank should have been slightly harder for the characters to accomplish.

5. Predictability. The first time I read this book, it was obvious to me where Alaska went at the end. I don’t know why it took the characters so long to figure it out.

So, why has this book stayed in my mind for years? Why do I keep coming back to it?

It’s because of the way that the author captures emotion. Even though I don’t like Alaska, I can believe that Pudge is infatuated with her. He’s built her up in his mind and made her something greater than she actually is. I think that’s realistic behavior, especially for a teenager who’s never been in love before. I can feel Pudge’s awkwardness when he is trying to get Alaska’s attention, and I can feel his grief when he can’t have her. It takes a very talented author to make me feel something while I read. That doesn’t usually happen.

The book also explores some important themes. Looking for Alaska is about love, forgiveness, and learning to live with questions that can’t be answered. It shows that it’s impossible to fully know someone. The image of a person that you have in your head will never match up to the person in real life.

I keep coming back to this book because I get something new out of it every time I reread it. I know that I’ll want to pick it up again in a few years.

Printz Review: How I Live Now – Meg Rosoff

How I Live Now – Meg Rosoff

Fifteen-year-old New Yorker Daisy is sent to live in the English countryside with cousins she’s never even met. When England is attacked and occupied by an unnamed enemy, the cousins find themselves on their own. As they grow more isolated, the farm becomes a kind of Eden with no rules. Until the war arrives in their midst. 

Daisy’s is a war story, a survival story, a love story—all told in the voice of a subversive and witty teenager. This book crackles with anxiety and with lust. It’s a stunning and unforgettable novel that captures the essence of the age of terrorism: how we live now.

Review: A few years ago, I went through a phase where I was only reading dystopias. I burned myself out quickly because a lot of the books felt like clones. It seemed like I was just reading the same book over and over.

I don’t know how I missed How I Live Now during my dystopia phase. It would have broken up the clone monotony. This book is a dystopia with a teenage girl as a main character, but it’s a little different from what I’m used to.

Fifteen-year-old Daisy is living with her cousins in England when a war breaks out, and the nearby village is invaded. The cousins are split up and sent to live in different foster homes until Daisy’s aunt can get back to England. When Daisy begins to suspect that her aunt is never coming home, she becomes desperate to reunite with her cousins.

Daisy isn’t your typical YA dystopian heroine. She has no interest in politics. It isn’t her job to overthrow the government and save the world. She doesn’t even know what the war is about or who’s fighting. Daisy and her cousins are just kids who are trying to survive something that they don’t understand. This dystopia is creepy because it feels so plausible.

To contrast the realistic dystopian elements, the book has some strange fantasy elements. Daisy and her cousins have a psychic connection with each other and the landscape. I like that the psychic connection is kept mysterious. Daisy and her cousins just accept that they can read each other’s minds. This is how their lives work. They don’t question it. The connection is interesting and makes the story more than a typical dystopian/survival/war book.

There are a few things that I didn’t like about the book, but the story is compelling enough that I could easily look past them. The writing style was distracting at first. There are a lot of long sentences and SHOUTY CAPS. I did get used to it eventually because it’s realistic and true to Daisy’s personality.

I guess I also have to talk about the insta-cousin-love. Daisy does fall in romantic love with her cousin shortly after meeting him. My first thought was, “Are YA authors so desperate to include a romance in their books that they have to resort to insta-cousin-love?” The romance is my biggest problem with the book. Even if the characters weren’t cousins, it would have felt underdeveloped and unnecessary. I’m not sure why this book needed a romance. Luckily, it isn’t the main focus of the story.

The best thing about How I Live Now is its themes. Unlike a lot of dystopias, it doesn’t deal with large-scale problems. It’s about reevaluating your life and deciding what’s important. It’s a very personal story, and that’s what I love most about it.

  

Printz Review: The First Part Last – Angela Johnson

The First Part Last – Angela Johnson

Bobby is your classic urban teenaged boy—impulsive, eager, restless. On his sixteenth birthday, he gets some news from his girlfriend, Nia, that changes his life forever. She's pregnant. Bobby's going to be a father. Suddenly things like school and house parties and hanging with friends are replaced by visits to Nia's obstetrician and a social worker who says that the only way for Nia and Bobby to lead a normal life is to put their baby up for adoption. 

With powerful language and keen insight, Johnson looks at the male side of teen pregnancy as she delves into one young man's struggle to figure out what "the right thing" is and then to do it. No matter what the cost.

Review: I read this entire book without putting it down once. I know the book is only 130 pages, so that doesn’t sound impressive, but I don’t think I’ve read a book in one sitting since The Hunger Games came out. This is going to be a short review. I don’t have much to say other than “This little book is good!”

Anyway, The First Part Last is about Bobby, a sixteen-year-old who is raising his newborn daughter on his own.

The book is written in a fragmented writing style that really allows the reader to experience Bobby’s exhaustion, confusion, and desperation. He’s trying to do what’s right for his daughter, but he doesn’t always make the best choices. The writing style reminds me of urban poetry at times. The chapters alternate between “Then” and “Now.” The “Then” chapters are about Nia’s pregnancy, and the “Now” chapters are about Bobby’s struggle to raise their daughter. Even though the book is intense, it’s not hopeless. You get a sense that Bobby will do whatever it takes to care for his child.

Even though this is a contemporary book, there is a lot of suspense. The reader doesn’t find out why Nia isn’t involved in the baby’s life until the end. Older readers will probably pick up on the foreshadowing and figure it out before the end, but younger readers may be surprised.

This is an important book because it focuses on a teen father. In our society, teen mothers get all of the attention, but there are fathers who are raising children alone. They deserve to have their stories told, too. 

Printz Review: Postcards from No Man’s Land – Aidan Chambers

Postcards from No Man’s Land – Aidan Chambers

Seventeen-year-old Jacob Todd is about to discover himself. Jacob's plan is to go to Amsterdam to honor his grandfather who died during World War II. He expects to go, set flowers on his grandfather's tombstone, and explore the city. But nothing goes as planned. Jacob isn't prepared for love—or to face questions about his sexuality. Most of all, he isn't prepared to hear what Geertrui, the woman who nursed his grandfather during the war, has to say about their relationship. Geertrui was always known as Jacob's grandfather's kind and generous nurse. But it seems that in the midst of terrible danger, Geertrui and Jacob's grandfather's time together blossomed into something more than a girl caring for a wounded soldier. And like Jacob, Geertrui was not prepared. Geertrui and Jacob live worlds apart, but their voices blend together to tell one story—a story that transcends time and place and war.

Review: I really liked half of this book and really disliked the other half.

In 1995, seventeen-year-old Jacob goes to Amsterdam to meet Geertrui, the woman who took care of his injured grandfather during World War II. Geertrui is too ill to spend much time talking to Jacob, so she writes him a letter that explains the secret love affair that she had with his grandfather. The chapters alternate points-of-view. Half of the book is about Jacob’s trip to Amsterdam. The other half is Geertrui’s letter.

I’m conflicted about this book because I love Geertrui’s chapters, but I was constantly tempted to skim Jacob’s. Geertrui’s chapters are about how she fell in love with a wounded British soldier who she was hiding from the Germans. In her story, there’s tension and drama and likeable characters. In Jacob’s story, there’s . . . pretty much nothing. He travels from his home in England and wanders around Amsterdam. He doesn’t spend a lot of time with Geertrui, and he doesn’t have much personality, so I got bored with him quickly. I also wish that his part of the book had more resolution. Ambiguous endings usually don’t bother me, but after slogging through that many pages, I wanted more of a conclusion.

One thing that I do love about the entire book is how sex and sexuality are handled. Sex isn’t just something that happens. The characters actually think about it and make decisions about it. Geertrui considers birth control and weighs the pros and cons of having an affair with a married soldier before she does it. Jacob’s trip to Amsterdam gives him a chance to think about his own sexuality and admit that he may be bisexual.

This isn’t my favorite Printz Award winner. The writing is a bit preachy at times, and I think I would have liked the book a lot better if we got more Geertrui and less Jacob. Actually, a whole book about Geertrui would be fabulous. She’s an interesting character.