When Zachary Beaver Came to Town, by Kimberly Willis Holt

This was recommended to me by a high school librarian I know. She says it takes place in a town like (or THE town) where she grew up in Texas. It's a sweet story about kindness and learning how to treat people right and forgive their idiosyncrasies and just loving them. Everyone in this book is perfectly imperfect: they make mistakes--some big ones--and they struggle to forgive themselves for those errors while missing their importance to one another.

It's one of those books that grows on you after you read it, and I hope it sticks with me for awhile.

The Mystery of the Fire Dragon, by Carolyne Keene

I haven't read a Nancy Drew Mystery in years, and this was just as fun as I remember...allowing for a lot of shuddering over the total non-PC-ness of the story. Nancy Drew goes to New York City, takes Chinatown by storm, flies to Hong Kong and solves a mystery for the police and, presumably, US Customs. Fun, and really silly.

Finny, by Justin Kramon

This was a gift from a friend who loved it, which I just rediscovered. And it turns out to be a very good book following Finny Short from age 13 or so until her mid-30s. It's a sweet, potentially sappy story that manages to avoid getting treacly.

I'm donating my copy to the library, since no one in our consortium owns it.

The Center of Everything, by Laura Moriarty (on CD)

Wow. There's a lot in this book to think about, which is a nice counterpoint because nothing much actually happens in the sense of plot. A 10-year-old girl grows up into an 18-year-old young adult. Think about those years in your life: full of potential, much sturm und drang, self-definition, drama, etc. For most people, most of the time, it's also a period of fallowness that is where you become You.

And so, Evelyn at age ten is relatively happy living with her young mother in a run-down apartment complex, being visited by her evangelical-Christian grandmother (but never her grandfather) regularly, and trying to make sense of the nearby and distant currents of life in Kansas in the 1980s. That year is a pivotal year: she comes to understand that family is complicated, that adults make horrifically bad judgments that turn their kids' lives upside down, that people are usually hypocritical about something in their lives, and that sometimes moms don't have all the right answers. Her mother gets pregnant, again, loses her job, becomes depressed, tries to go on welfare but her temper and pride cause problems there, and eventually gives birth to a boy with serious birth defects.

By the time Evelyn is 18, her best friends have ended up married to each other because Travis gets Deena pregnant when she is just 15. Evelyn has always assumed that she and Travis would be together, yet given the opportunity to do just that...she turns it down.

This is not a girl you always like; she does some pretty typically teenaged 'mean things' to people, but in the end she is what we all are at 18: complex and beautiful, not-yet-fully-formed, yet showing the outlines of potentiality. Gorgeous book.

The Wilder Life, by Wendy McClure

The author was as much of a Laura fan as a child as I, but she says she grew out of it, only to rediscover the books soon after the death of her mother. She and her husband make the rounds of all the extant Laura houses on a journey to rediscover the 1880s and her childhood. Good book, a bit 'skimmy' but fun for Little House die-hards like me.

A Lost Adolescence : Surviving the Blitz, by Joy Aavang

Self-published and not without some problems, but a well-told story of what it was like living with bombs dropping regularly. I was never transported back in time as a good writer can do, but it's good to have this documented. And because I know the author passing-well, I could hear her voice telling the stories.

The Diviner's Tale, by Bradford Morrow

Good book. A little heavy-handed in the explanation of the work "divine" but a good mystery told somewhat backwards in that the further you get into the book, the further back (and deeper) you go in the narrator's life.

Good.

Three Stations, by Martin Cruz Smith

Russia is sad. Sad sad sad.

Chasing the Bear : A Young Spenser Novel, by Robert B. Parker

Girl Sleuth : Nancy Drew and the Women who Created Her, by Melanie Rehak

Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot : A New Look at Betrayer And Betrayed, by Bart Ehrman

Well, all I can say after reading this is that I'm definitely not a Gnostic, but I still love the idea of finding unknown early Christian texts. I'm such a history geek.

Inkspell, by Cornelia Funke (on CD)

So, this is a sequel to Inkheart. It's long. Very long. There are big chunks I'd edit and discard. However, in the end, it's a good story: the 'real world' characters all end up inside the book--the original book, not the one by Funke--Inkspell, where they find Dustfinger and almost all of the original cast back in place, along with Fenolio who is the actual author of Inkheart.

Confused yet?

You really need to read the first book first to follow all of this one; there is an awful lot of back-referring. This is also one of the few books ostensibly for children in which there are no characters that are All Good, though there are several who are All Evil. Even the heroes are conflicted and do some pretty Bad, or at best Stupid, things. It's very realistic in that way--which is quite weird to say in a fantasy novel.

By the end, some of the people you didn't like in the beginning are less unloveable, while those you sort of liked have tarnished a bit. Funke doesn't pull punches with her characters. She's especially hard on Fenolio, the writer, who is maddeningly egotistical but also hard to resist.

I must add that Brendan Fraser does an outstanding job narrating this book. The voices he gives the characters--a critical plot point for this book--are spot on, and he has fun with accents and tones that a lot of readers can't quite maintain. Yes, THAT Brendan Fraser.

Child of My Heart, by Alice McDermott (on CD)

Had I been reading this book instead of listening to it, I might not have finished it. But listening to it slowed it down to a proper pace, made it much more consistent with the story.

The story: Set in East Hampton, Long Island in the 50s or 60s, the main character is a 15-year-old girl who is very self-contained and sure of herself. She's in great demand not only for her superb babysitting and petsitting skills, but because she is beautiful. Very aware of that fact, somewhat snobby about those less fortunate in the looks area, but sensible and calm about nearly everything. In fact, she's so calm that it's somewhat surreal at times. Her parents have specific designs in moving from the city to Long Island: they recognize their only daughter's beauty and want to give her the best chance to capitalize on it by 'marrying well' which means making her available to the cream of society in whatever manner that is socially acceptable.

The plot revolves around Theresa's cousin Daisy--"poor Daisy"--one of two girls in large working-class family and her visit to spend her 8th summer on Long Island. She's a sweet, generous, kind-hearted child with a wry wit and a big secret. There is a great deal of foreshadowing and that brings a strong melancholic flavor to the hurly-burly dreaminess of everyday life in a summer resort area.

Lovely book. Lovely mood. A little manipulative, which can get a bit cloying, but the ending is just perfectly written.