The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner is a spin-off from Eclipse, telling the interesting back story of a minor character. Since it’s a novella it’s short, and made for a fun afternoon read.
It’s been awhile since I read Eclipse, and I haven’t seen the movie, so I didn’t remember who Bree Tanner was until I got to where her story was intersecting with Bella’s. That was fine, but you will want to have at least read Eclipse before you read this book, to be familiar with the world of sparkly vampires.
In Eclipse, Edward’s enemy is building an army of newborn vampires to battle and defeat the Cullens. Bree Tanner is one of that army, who’s used in Eclipse to show how ruthless the Volturi are. In an introduction, Stephenie Meyer says she wishes she had ended that differently now, and the reader will agree with her in that, because this book does give the reader sympathy for Bree, a ruthless bloodthirsty hunter.
I found it kind of amusing that one way their leader controls the newborn vampires is to tell them it’s dangerous to go out in the sunlight, that it would turn them to ash. He tells them all the old tales are true, and they believe him since they are, after all, vampires.
Toward the beginning, Bree meets another vampire who actually seems trustworthy, and they discover the secret. Even though she’s used to everyone looking beautiful, they’re filled with wonder at the sparkliness, just like Bella was in Twilight.
Stephenie Meyer manages to make us care about this bloodthirsty vampire hunter and want her to learn to transcend her savagery. We enjoy the beginnings of her journey to do so, though unfortunately her second life is very short.
An enjoyable quick adventure back in the world of sparkly vampires and undying love, or rather, undead love.
I read this book entirely waiting at traffic lights. Well, except the parts I read aloud to people when I first checked out the book. The many, many stories in here, by stellar children’s authors, are really short enough to be read in half a minute. It was perfect for reading at traffic lights, and would also be perfect for reading to a class of schoolchildren to get them interested in the library.
I have to admit, most of these stories would have scared me too much when I was a little girl with an overactive imagination. Now, they make me laugh with their delightful creepiness. Especially the first story, by Lemony Snicket, about the quiet man who watches you every time you sleep.
Since they are so short, the stories tend to be the sort of thing you’d find in The Twilight Zone, but they all tend toward the scary side, especially if you think about them too long!
Now, this isn’t for all kids. Not the ones like I was who scare easily. If I do ever get a chance to read some of these stories to a class of schoolchildren, I will have to be a little careful which ones I choose.
However, I know from working in public libraries that there are lots of kids who love scary stories and want more of them. This book is absolutely perfect for those kids. And if any such child is a reluctant reader, this book is exactly what’s needed to draw them in. The stories are so short, you can always read just one more.
I confess I probably wouldn’t have read Will Grayson, Will Grayson if I weren’t such a huge John Green fan. I was won over by hearing him speak about his Printz Honor Winning book Abundance of Katherines three years ago at ALA Annual Conference, and then completely hooked when I started watching his and his brother’s daily video blog through 2007. What can I say? He’s my kind of nerd. Nerd Fighters are made of Awesome.
Of course, I also read An Abundance of Katherines, Let It Snow, and my favorite, Paper Towns. So I thoroughly admire John Green as an author. Though the funny thing about reading his books is that I always hear the main character in my head speaking with John Green’s voice, since I’ve heard him so much on the internet.
Anyway, I was four chapters into his latest book (written in alternating chapters with David Levithan), when I went to the 2010 American Library Association Annual Conference in Washington DC. The exhibits had just opened, and I was frantically grabbing free advance copies of books. I looked up, and there was John Green!
I said, “You’re John Green!” and he graciously conceded that he was. I tried to think of clever things to say. Did I tell him I think he’s a brilliant writer? No, I said I follow his blog. Couldn’t think of much to say after that. Anyway, as he was about to go off to the exhibits, I got my wits about me and asked if I could get a picture with him. He said “David can take it!” as his companions were coming to see what was keeping him — and I realized that familiar face I’d seen with John was David Levithan. So, I insisted on a picture with both of them. This was at the very start of ALA, and it made my night!
Here I am with David Levithan and John Green at ALA 2010.
On the last night of ALA, I got another picture with John Green, at the reception after the Printz Awards Ceremony. Kind of fitting, since I’d first seen him in person at the 2007 Printz Awards.
So, as you can imagine, I like the author, and of course I want to like his books. As it began, it seemed a little depressing, so I might have stopped. One of the Will Graysons is clinically depressed. The other one isn’t terribly happy.
It also turns out to be mainly about Tiny Cooper:
“Tiny Cooper is not the world’s gayest person, and he is not the world’s largest person, but I believe he may be the world’s largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world’s gayest person who is really, really large.”
If I weren’t a huge fan of the author, I would probably simply avoid a book where one of the main topics is a high school student’s gayness. But I’m glad I didn’t avoid this one.
The book is about two high school students named Will Grayson. They don’t know each other. They live in different Chicago suburbs. One Will Grayson has been Tiny Cooper’s best friend all his life. But that Will recently lost what other friends he had because:
“After some school-board member got all upset about gays in the locker room, I defended Tiny Cooper’s right to be both gigantic (and, therefore, the best member of our shitty football team’s offensive line) and gay in a letter to the school newspaper that I, stupidly, signed.”
Tiny is writing, directing, and performing a musical about his life. So naturally, there is a character named Gil Wrayson, which Tiny assures Will is a fictional character.
Meanwhile, the other Will Grayson (written by David Levithan), is in love with his internet chat friend named Isaac. He’s gay but won’t admit it to anyone else, he’s depressed, and his only friend at school is a girl who’s even more depressing.
A strange twist of circumstances brings the two Will Graysons to the same porn shop in Chicago late on a Friday night. Both Will Graysons suffer a big disappointment that night, but the other Will Grayson discovers Tiny Cooper, and Tiny Cooper discovers him.
I wouldn’t want my teenage son to take the characters in this book as role models, but I don’t think older teens read books to find role models. The characters’ language and humor are crude (which almost got me to shut the book early), but it’s also very clever. The characters do seem completely real. Tiny Cooper is larger than life, but he’s no cardboard cut-out. And the two Will Graysons have conflicting emotions and confusions that seem completely true to life. Though I wouldn’t want my son to take them for role models, I’d be happy to have him find friends like these. Flawed friends, but ultimately the kind of people you can count on, you can tell the truth to.
And though this book is about some characters being gay and coming to terms with that, more than that, it’s a book about friendship. It’s a book about real love, and a book about truth. It’s a book that shows that people are the same underneath, whether they are gay or not, and that the love of friendship can transcend all that.
As Will Grayson says in a moment of confrontation and revelation:
“You know what’s important? Who would you die for? Who do you wake up at five forty-five in the morning for even though you don’t even know why he needs you?”
This book is awesome. Like so many great books do, it helped me put myself in the shoes of someone very different from me, thus looking at my own life and my own world a little differently. I’m glad I read it.
Springboard Press, New York, 2009. 310 pages.
Starred Review
I think that Katrina Kenison’s two sons must be right in between the ages of my two sons. I remember reading her book Mitten Strings for God about being the mother of young boys when my boys were young. Now she’s written a book about being the mother of teenage sons who are growing up and finding their way in the world. It resonates with me, because my oldest son has graduated from college and moved out, and my youngest son is about to be a junior in high school.
That wasn’t the only thing I liked about this memoir. In the book, Katrina Kenison deals with so many issues of midlife. They leave their home of many years and find a dream home that needs to be rebuilt. She leaves her long time job. There are so many issues of change and meaning that a woman deals with at this time of life, and I was encouraged and uplifted to read about Katrina Kenison’s journey.
I liked this paragraph about parenting during the difficult times:
“It is always a relief to be reminded that my job is not to control, or judge, or change my son, but simply to help him remember, with words and touch, who he really is. Loving him this way, I am better able to find within myself the faith and patience necessary to survive his painful transformations. I know to hold a space for his beauty, even when it slips from sight. And I come a little bit closer to understanding his true essence, to remembering the goodness that resides just beneath the surface of even his very worst behavior, behavior that is usually rooted in fear and confusion and self-protection.”
Here’s a nice passage about the changes and growth of midlife:
“The world is filled with need. If I am to be of some use, I must first rise to the challenge of my own rebirth and growth, must engage in the gradual, demanding process of discovering the person I am meant to be now and taking up the work I am called to do.
“’Go into yourself, and see how deep the place is from which your life flows,’ the poet Rainer Maria Rilke once instructed an aspiring young writer. The advice might as easily have been written for a middle-aged woman contemplating her emptying nest. The work my friends seem compelled to undertake in their forties and fifties is no longer what they think they should do. It is what they feel, in their deepest souls, that they are meant to do. What the example of their lives suggests, what I desperately want to believe, is that once we have weathered these changes, honored our sorrows and released them, there is also great joy in moving on.”
And here’s a wonderful part about growing up as a mother:
“Now, we’re in a different place and a different time, and I need to become a different kind of mother. A mother who knows how to back off. A mother whose gaze is not quite so intently focused on her own two endlessly absorbing children, but who is engaged instead in a rich, full life of her own. A mother who cares a good deal less than she used to about what time people in her household go to bed, what they eat for breakfast, whether they wear coats or not, and what they choose to do, or not do, with their own time. A mother who, though her protective, maternal instincts run as fierce and deep as ever, manages, in all but extreme moments, to keep those instincts in check. A mother who trusts in who her children are, even if they aren’t exactly who she thinks they ought to be. Who keeps faith in their futures, even when the things they do, and the words they say, give her pause in the present. A mother who remembers, above all else, that the greatest gift she can give to her own two wildly different, nearly grown sons is the knowledge that, no matter what, she loves them both absolutely, just exactly as they are.”
I enjoyed this book tremendously. Reading it is like having a friend to talk to along the exciting and interesting journey of midlife. She makes it feel a little less uncharted and scary.
Bloomsbury, New York, 2010. 266 pages.
Starred Review
I’m becoming a bigger and bigger fan of Jessica Day George. Princess of Glass is a follow up to her excellent Princess of the Midnight Ball, but it’s also an incredibly creative twist on the story of Cinderella.
I thought that the Cinderella story has been rewritten so well so many different ways, there was not much more that could be done with it. Though I must admit all the versions I’ve read are among my favorite fairy tale retellings: Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine, Bella at Midnight, by Diane Stanley, and Just Ella, by Margaret Peterson Haddix.
Jessica Day George does something quite different with the story and wonderfully creative, using the version where Cinderella attends three balls. What if the godmother were really an evil witch bent on entrapping Cinderella for her own evil purposes? What if the prince and all the people at the ball were affected by an enchantment and falling in love with Cinderella despite their true feelings?
Finally, what if a princess who had experience with evil enchantments and how to protect against them was at the court and was falling in love with the prince herself?
The main character of the book is Poppy, one of the younger of the 12 Dancing Princesses featured in Princess of the Midnight Ball. After so many princes suffered fatal accidents trying to break their family’s enchantment, the king tries to build bridges by sending some daughters to foreign courts.
Poppy is a delightfully independent young lady. When she notices strange things going on around Eleanora, a clumsy servant girl from an impoverished family, she determines to get to the bottom of it. I like the way she’s still knitting charms to help, which she learned from her brother-in-law.
The author includes two knitting patterns at the end, one for the poppy-decorated shawl Poppy wears to a ball. My only complaint is that I wish there were a picture. I’m going to have to make one to see what it looks like!
I found it ingenious how Jessica Day George wove in all the motifs of the Cinderella story (except maybe the stepsisters) in a way so completely different than I’d ever thought of them before. Brilliant!
I can’t help but hope that more stories will be forthcoming about some of the other 12 princesses and their adventures in other foreign lands.
Candlewick Press, 2009. 134 pages.
2010 Siebert Medal Winner
2010 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Honor Book
2009 Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book
NCTE Orbis Pictis Award
Bank Street Flora Stieglitz Straus Award
Almost Astronauts tells the story of the “Mercury 13,” thirteen women who hoped to become astronauts back in 1961. Despite performing with outstanding test results, the women were not allowed to become astronauts because they were not jet test pilots — and they were not jet test pilots because women were not allowed to be jet test pilots.
Author Tanya Lee Stone lays out the story of these women in an organized but dramatic way, with plenty of photographs illustrating the steps of the process. She also includes newspaper and magazine articles, editorial cartoons, and even a letter to Lyndon B. Johnson about the program with “Let’s stop this now!” scrawled across the bottom.
The story is intriguing, and certainly not one I’d ever heard before. These women underwent rigorous testing and had outstanding results. They hoped to become astronauts, but lost out to the “social order” of the time.
However, I do love it that Tanya Stone ends the book with stories of women who did become astronauts. The Mercury 13 laid the foundation, and today girls can freely dream of some day traveling to outer space as the commander of a mission. Here’s how the author introduces that chapter:
“Some may read the story of these thirteen women and think that their adventure did not have a happy ending. But that depends on where you draw the finish line. The women were stopped in 1962. But they confronted NASA, exposed the trap of the jet-pilot rule, and destroyed the idea that women could not handle stress as well as men. And then Sally Ride did fly, and Eileen Collins did command the shuttle. Today, women are flying into space. But women who want their wings still continue to battle prejudice. So women continue to find inspiration in the story of these thirteen pioneers. Here are some examples of challenges women still face and of the new beginnings that are taking place.”
by Barbara Bottner
illustrated by Michael Emberley
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2010. 28 pages.
Starred Review
I’ve been a Barbara Bottner fan ever since our family got the book Bootsie Barker Bites and had the privilege of reading it over and over to our sons. When I saw this brand-new book she’d written, I knew it would be the perfect choice for the five second-grade class library tours we did in May.
Miss Brooks Loves Books (and I don’t) features an exuberant school librarian. In fact the only thing that gives me pause about this book is how Miss Brooks is an uber-librarian who puts me to shame. But she’s a great character, so I can enjoy her without feeling too guilty.
Miss Brooks goes overboard to get her classes to love books like she does. But the cynical little girl telling the story is not amused. The art for this book is absolutely perfect, with Miss Brooks dressing up as picture book characters and bursting with energy. The little girl, on the other hand, conveys all the body language — eye rolling, turning away, slumping — of someone who is just plain bored. Clearly she finds Miss Brooks tiresome. “Vexing” is the word she uses.
Then comes Book Week. Truly terrifying. All the kids are supposed to dress up for their favorite story and tell the class why they love it.
The girl is still unimpressed by the presentations about trains and fairies and cowboys and dogs. But then her mother finds her a book with warts in it. She reads Shrek! by William Steig.
“Shrek has hairs on his nose. And he snorts. I love that!”
My favorite part is when the girl dons an ogre costume and makes stick-on warts for the whole class.
It goes to show —
“Even ogres (like me) can find something funny and fantastic and appalling in the library.
I checked out Mountains Beyond Mountains because of how much I was moved by Tracy Kidder’s Strength in What Remains, the story of Deogratias.
In Deo’s story, he was deeply moved by reading one of Dr. Paul Farmer’s books, and he ended up working for Dr. Farmer’s organization, Partners in Health. Deo ultimately established a clinic in Burundi under that organization’s sponsorship.
So when I learned that Tracy Kidder had written an earlier book about Dr. Paul Farmer, I made sure to get my hands on it.
Dr. Farmer’s story is inspiring. From a kid in a large family who lived on a bus, he became a Harvard specialist in infectious diseases and founded an organization that saves thousands of lives in the poorest parts of the world.
One thing I learned from this audiobook is that millions of people in the world die early because they are poor. Dr. Farmer’s work is about bringing healthcare to the poor. He has pioneered ways of battling diseases like drug-resistant tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS that effectively heal poor people who were not being treated. He has now helped people in poverty all over the globe.
This book goes on rather long. But the story is amazing. Tracy Kidder presents Dr. Paul as someone full of quirks and human weaknesses, definitely not a saint, who is yet a remarkable person who is changing the world. I did enjoy listening to it. I might not have gotten all the way through if I had been reading to it, but listening in the car, I did find myself interested in finding out about the next challenge Dr. Farmer faced and overcame.
He began in Haiti, and has made a huge difference there. The whole time I was listening, I grieved for the people of Haiti, knowing that they would later face an earthquake. I am sure that no one is better equipped to help the people of Haiti to recover than Partners in Health, since they already have helped so many people there.
This book will inspire you with the story of one man making a huge difference. It could have been written as a propaganda tool for Partners in Health, but Tracy Kidder does fill the book with facts that show the effectiveness of their methods. He’s not trying to fudge results. He’s not trying to paint Paul Farmer as a saint. He’s telling about a great work that’s being done. Even if you don’t read the book, I highly recommend taking a look at the Partners in Health website at www.pih.org.
by Shannon and Dean Hale
illustrated by Nathan Hale
Bloomsbury, New York, 2010. 144 pages.
Here’s a companion graphic novel to Rapunzel’s Revenge, which was also written by Shannon Hale and her husband Dean and illustrated by Nathan Hale, who, interestingly enough, is no relation to the other Hales.
In Rapunzel’s Revenge, the creators took the story of Rapunzel as sort of a framework for a melodrama set in some sort of version of the Wild West, only with magic and a witch-like tyrant and strange creatures. In Rapunzel’s adventures, she met up with a con-artist named Jack who carried around a goose that laid golden eggs.
You don’t really need to read Rapunzel’s Revenge first to enjoy Calamity Jack. In it, Jack is bringing Rapunzel to the big city where he grew up. In Rapunzel’s Revenge, they rescued Rapunzel’s mother from a tyrant terrorizing the whole area. In Calamity Jack their plan is to rescue Jack’s mother from a tyrant terrorizing the whole area.
We also learn about Jack’s background. Not surprisingly, it involves a beanstalk and a giant. Though like Rapunzel’s Revenge, the fairy tale framework is simply a jumping-off point.
The story is wild, over-the-top, not exactly believable, and melodramatic — but a whole lot of fun. This is a graphic novel adventure yarn with a touch of romance and lots of teamwork, as Jack acquires a rival who’s also interested in Rapunzel. She’s still wielding her braids as a lasso, but it also takes Jack’s schemes to defeat the giants and save the town.
What a lovely weekend! Though it goes to show that even with a whole weekend set aside for it, I barely make a dent in my piles of books to read and books to review. This weekend, I also made some progress blogging about the upheaval in my life this month. It’s book related, since the main event was losing my job as a librarian, right? Anyway, I also did some blogging on Sonderjourneys, Sonderblessings, and Sonderquotes. Besides posting reviews on this blog, I also posted the reviews on www.sonderbooks.com, my main website where I have links to related books and have all my reviews organized by type of review.
My 48 hours are up. Here are my stats:
Reading: 11 hours, 35 minutes
Listening to an audiobook: 3 hours, 50 minutes
Blogging: 9 hours, 20 minutes
Networking: 1 hour, 55 minutes (I did not count the 3 hours I spent at the DC Kidlit Book Club, though!)
Total: 26 hours, 40 minutes
The key this year was reading The Sky Is Everywhere through the night until I finished it. If I had been as caught up in The Red Pyramid, maybe I could have done it both nights.
I was disappointed that I only finished 3 books. But I did get lots of reading time in, so I can’t really complain. And I always read nonfiction books a chapter at a time, rotating my many piles of books. So any reading time makes progress!
I did review all the books I finished, plus one book from the backlog. I would probably have to spend more time on reviewing to take care of that backlog altogether. But it was nice to finish the weekend without being further behind on books to review.
Here are the books I finished. I was already on page 234 of The Red Pyramid, but the rest I began this weekend:
The audiobook I’m listening to and totally enjoying is The Princess Plot, by Kirsten Boie
However, even though the total finished is low, here are some other interesting stats:
Pages read: 995
Words written on blogs: 6,356
I read lots and lots of partial books. First, during my daily devotional time, I read a page out of several devotional books:
The Bible Journey to the Heart, by Melody Beattie The Book of Common Prayer Praying God’s Words Day by Day, by Beth Moore Grace Notes, by Philip Yancey Meditations to Heal Your Life, by Louise Hay More Language of Letting Go, by Melody Beattie
The other nonfiction from which I read chapters are: God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World — and Why Their Differences Matter, by Stephen Prothero Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book, by Anita Silvey A Thousand Names for Joy, by Byron Katie Getting Organized in the Google Era, by Douglas C. Merrill For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage, by Tara Parker-Pope Won’t Let You Go Until You Bless Me, by Andree Seu Feel: The Power of Listening to Your Heart, by Matthew Elliott Embracing the Wide Sky, by Daniel Tammett Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream, by Tanya Lee Stone
I kept expecting to find one to grab me enough to finish it to the end, but I was impatient and wanted to get to the fiction. Most of these I will finish before too much longer.
It was a wonderful weekend! I want to do this every weekend! Especially with so much turmoil and uncertainty related to my job, it was extra nice to have time to forget about it all and read, and also to reflect on it all and blog and remember to count my blessings.
Thank you, Mother Reader for sponsoring this challenge! What a treat!
The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner
