Feeling Sorry for Celia

I guess I’m not the only one who really enjoys novels that unfold through letters and other personal documents, because Jaclyn Moriarty’s Feeling Sorry for Celia (2001) is still flying off the shelves. Told entirely through letters, post-its, memos, anonymous love notes, faxes, and other bits of written communication to & from 15-year-old Elizabeth Carry, Feeling Sorry for Celia is a wonderful, funny coming-of-age story.

The details about Elizabeth’s life jostle for position like unruly puzzle pieces as we read messages from her Mom (always at work), her Dad (gone since she was a baby, now back in town and wanting way too much attention), her new penpal (Christina, a breath of fresh air from the wrong side of the tracks), her almost-boyfriend (and fellow long distance runner, Saxon), her secret admirer (let’s keep it a secret...), and, of course, her best friend, Celia.

Celia is a fairly unusual girl:

So anyway I really only have one friend here, that's Celia, and I promise you she is most DEFINITELY not a nice private school girl. She's kind of weird actually. She's always getting into trouble because she gets bored really really easily So she always wants to try something new, like shaving her head or chopping down a tree or taking apart the kitchen so she can put it back together (she did that to my kitchen actually, and it took us six months to reconnect the dishwasher).

My mum says it's because Celia has an attention span the size of a sesame seed.

Celia's mum says it's because Celia's identity is unfurling itself slowly, like a tulip bud, and it's a breathtakingly beautiful thing to see.

At the start of the book, Celia has run away to join the circus, where she is training to be a tightrope walker. Elizabeth and Saxon “rescue” her, and before we know it, Celia and Saxon are dating.

Uh oh. With her best friend dating the guy she has a crush on, Elizabeth is ready to branch out. Things happen, lives change, secrets are revealed, and, courtesy of Moriarty’s letter-by-letter style, we have a front row seat to what each character is up to.

My favorite letters are the imaginary ones: the earnest, hilarious exhortations to Elizabeth from Elizabeth, written by the likes of The Cold Hard Truth Association, The Best Friends Club, The Association of Teenagers, The Society of High School Runners Who Aren't Very Good at Long-Distance Running but Would Be if They Just Trained, etc.

Dear Ms. Clarry,

It is with great pleasure that we invite you to join our Society.

We have just found out about your holiday. It's so impressive! You had four assignments, an English essay, and a chapter of math to do. And you didn't do one single piece of homework!

Fabulous!

Also, we have a feeling that you have a history test today. And you're trying to study now? On the bus? With the Brookfield boys climbing onto each other's shoulders to get to the emergency roof exit? And with Celia about to get on the bus at any moment? And you think that's going to make a difference!!!

That's really very amusing, Elizabeth. We like you for it.

You're perfect for our Society and we're very excited about having you join.

The Society of People Who Are Definitely Going to Fail High School

Feeling Sorry for Celia is great stuff. Try it, if you haven’t. Tell us about it, if you have.

P.S. There are a lot of novels written in this format (aka epistolary novels), including Dracula, The Screwtape Letters, The Color Purple, The Boy Next Door, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Age 13 3/4, and among my very faves, The Confessions of a Shopaholic.

Uglies

Tally Youngblood, at 15 and 3/4 still one of the Uglies, is desperate for escape from the drudgery of waiting for that magic 16th birthday when she can redesign herself in the process of surgically becoming one of the Pretties. She'll be granted a whole new lease on life with a body of choice, including fresh, unblemished skin and re-ground bones, and the big move across the river to New Pretty Town, a city dedicated to the mindless pursuits of pleasure and decadence. How “bubbly!” What?! Yes, it’s true, it’s too true, but is it too good to be true? Only Scott Westerfeld knows for sure.

Tally’s new friend, Shay, who teaches her the thrills and chills of hover-boarding in their last days of ugliness, heads off to join the Smokies, who occupy land out west somewhere in a communal effort to remain true to themselves and live as nature intended. Tally is horrified but intrigued until the Department of Special Circumstances (yes, the Specials!) offers her a deal she can’t refuse: help them locate Shay and the other Smokies, or die trying. Well, it’s not that drastic, but if she refuses, she’ll remain an Ugly forever.

Talk about an adventure! Tally almost dies trying, having made the "big mistake" and slept among the white tiger orchids, but once she’s discovered Smoke, she doesn’t want to leave. One takes the rebels at face value, so to speak, no alterations necessary. David, who was born there (oh yes, she must meet his parents,) introduces her to a non-engineered society, that is, one built upon the tragic lessons of the Rusties but stopped well short of the plastic conformity of the Pretties, a place where work gloves and warm sweaters are worth a fortune in “SpagBol.”

And then, and then… as I said earlier, only Westerfeld knows for sure whether Tally will betray her new friends to the Department as promised. She does, after all, discover from David’s parents the secret of the lesions, and David’s kisses are quite warm, hmmm, yes. So…. what’s next? Some pretty special adventures hover just around the corner, if you know what I mean. Do you?

Inu-Yasha: A Feudal Fairy Tale

OMG -- can Rumiko Takahashi’s manga get any more popular? First, Ranma 1/2 was flying off the rack, and now it’s Inu-Yasha. (As soon as I finish this, I have to buy us some more copies.)

We start with Kagome, a typically sweet and dutiful Japanese school girl. She lives with her family and her cat, Buyo, in an old shrine, and everything is pretty normal until she falls down a well.

At this point, it’s good to strike from your mind any thoughts of Lassie (“What is it, girl? Has Timmy fallen in the well?”) or even Alice (“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”) No, Inu-Yasha is a bit more exciting than that. For instance, Kagome doesn’t exactly fall down the Bone Eating Well -- she is suddenly grabbed and hauled in by a centipede demon. No Wonderland, this, but ancient, feudal Japan, where demons and monsters and all the old legends are alive and well.

Fighting for her life against Centipede Lady, Kagome encounters the title character, Inu-Yasha. Half-human, half-dog demon, Inu-Yasha had been bound to the Tree of Ages until Kagome breaks the spell (cast by his first love, the priestess Kikyou.) As it happens, both the Centipede Demon and Inu-Yasha want the same thing: the power-enhancing Jewel of Four Souls, aka the Shikon no Tama, so Inu-Yasha joins forces with Kagome and the demon is a goner. In the process, Kagome is discovered to be the reincarnation of Kikyou; the jewel is discovered, struggled over, and smashed into shards; and the plot is set for what will eventually turn out to be a 33+ volume manga series.

Love & betrayal, blood & battle, monsters & magic, weapons & people of power, plus not a few screamingly funny lines, Inu-Yasha is a great yarn. Rumiko Takahashi has won 3 Shogakukan Manga Awards and the Inkpot, which is really no wonder. Inu-Yasha is also out as a television program, and a series of video games.

So, if you’re ready to meet the bloodsucking demon flea and the human monk with the wind tunnel in his hand -- or watch Kagome immobilize Inu-Yasha with the secret word, “Sit!” (too funny...) as he brandishes the magic sword, the Iron Crushing Fang, give this series a try.

And hey -- if you’re already a fan, who’s your favorite character?

Life As We Knew It

Miranda lives in a small Pennsylvania town where potential prom dates rule thoughts of spring. That and the fact that her best friend Megan is undergoing some “born again” alterations in her lifestyle and mindset are enough to occupy Miranda without TV news warnings of a potential asteroid strike.

Heavens above, an asteroid strike on earth?! No, silly, on the moon, no need to worry. Still, a certain frisson of fear ripples through her family as they stand outside one night, awaiting the event that will forever change Life As We Knew It. The asteroid actually knocks the moon a tad off its axis, thereby causing cataclysmic damage to earth: tsunamis destroy coastal areas, and earthquakes and volcanoes inflict damage beyond belief, the worst being clouds of ash which produce the dreaded effects of a nuclear winter.

What’s a girl to do? Susan Beth Pfeffer’s answer is what makes this story so appealing; she focuses on Miranda and her family, giving the Hollywood disaster scenes scant attention. Her quick-thinking mother enlists the aid of the children and their older neighbor, Mrs. Nesbitt, to stock the house with food, batteries, candles and water. Her younger brother is sent home from baseball camp that summer when they run out of food. Other brother, Matt, chops the backyard trees into so much firewood that the family is pushed out of the downstairs living spaces into the sunroom with the wood stove. We watch her father and his new wife bravely drive west after a tearful family reunion. With no school and no transportation, Miranda tries ice skating on the pond until the polluted air forces her inside, ever inside into a tighter and more confining space. A virus strikes the family, already weakened as their food supply dwindles, but the local hospital has become a dead zone. And then, in what seems like the nick of time, Miranda courageously ventures into town through the piles of fallen snow.

Stop. Slow down a minute and follow the domino effect of little sunlight and no power for electricity, water, and heat. No hints here; just think about it, all the way down the food chain….

If you’ve already read this, let me know if you think the story is plausible, and if there truly is a reason to be hopeful. What would YOU do?

(HHSLibrarian also podcasted on this title a while back.)

Parrotfish

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas of her junior year in high school, Angela McNair made some changes. Not just her hairstyle. Not just the sort of clothes she wore. Not just the people she hung around with. And not just her name. Nope, Angie changed way more than that. She changed her outside to match her inside: she changed her sexual identity. Sort of like the parrot fish.

Parrotfish, by Christine Wittlinger, has been on the shelf since last September. Well, not really on the shelf very much; it’s the number one most-taken-out new novel of the 2007/2008 school year -- beating out Bloodline, Life As We Knew It, and The Secret Hour by just 1 circulation. In a story all about family, and self, and coming of age, Wittlinger takes us on a rare journey through the early experiences of a female to male transsexual teen.

Angie tells her family first. Her Dad, with whom she has always done lots of guy stuff, is pretty zen. Her sister, Laurie, is mad and mortified. Her brother, Charlie, hardly looks up from his video games. Her Mom is absolutely stunned, and can’t even really look Angie in the eye. Angela, daughter and sister, is now Grady, son and brother.

When Grady goes back to school after Thanksgiving, he finds out pretty quickly that his spot in the pecking order has changed. He encounters equal opportunity harassment, from male and female alike. Some of his teachers can deal, and some cannot. People he never knew very well treat him better than most of his old friends. “ ‘Angela was my friend, but I don’t know who Grady is! I’m sorry, but I can’t call you that in front of people. I can’t be a part of this whole thing. It’s just too bizarre.’ "

In this novel, we spend a month in Grady’s head, silent observers as he grapples with the realities of his identity change. There are bad times, but nothing unspeakable. There are good times, but nothing ecstatic. There are a lot of uncomfortable, in the middle times. And there are the no-longer-mundane details associated with living a male life in a female body: where to go to the bathroom, changing before and after gym class, etc. Not to mention the complications of falling in love. And parts of Parrotfish are pretty funny. The wildly excessive Christmas prep at the McNair household and Grady’s wry inner monologs (“Does a Hamlet fish carry around a skull and ponder suicide?”) come to mind.

If you haven’t read Parrotfish, I have carefully not told you how everything comes out. If you have, why not take a minute to comment and tell us what you thought of it?

The Spellman Files

Voila! For my personal favorite, I'm sending you into detective fiction that goes beyond the normal, directly into the realm of ferocious fun and games. In fact, Lisa Lutz’s The Spellman Files is just plain outrageous at times. How can you not laugh aloud at a family whose hobby is spying on each other? I really cannot wait to get my hands on her new book, Curse of the Spellmans.

So, imagine a family run private investigation agency. Dad is an ex-cop, SFPD, as is Uncle Ray, who moves in shortly after the fun begins. Mom and Dad have raised David, Izzy and little Rae on a steady diet of surveillance and background checks, but David veers into the more profitable legal profession, leaving Izzy to follow her parents into the business. Izzy, after an adolescent career checkered with mischief, rebellion and arrests, really isn’t suited for anything else, and steps into adulthood, slowly acquiring a string of ex-boyfriends and suffering nights spent sleeping in her car.

The truth is, though, that it’s Rae who turns the whole family upside down with her natural talent for surveillance, and the inevitable consequences thereof. Negotiations that lead directly to blackmail govern Rae’s hold on the family. She’s got dirt on everyone, is addicted to sugar, and will stop at nothing in her quest to make the family pay for their minor infractions and take her seriously. Every week David pays her off so she won’t squeal on him. The parents negotiate everything from hair washing to sugar usage as Rae slowly builds her nest egg. But it’s Izzy who holds the line and forces Rae to pay for her sins.

Family conversations are enough to drive a sane person crazy, and Daniel, the dentist and soon-to-be ex-boyfriend # 10, can attest to that. Questions follow questions and half-truths abound. When Izzy gets fed up enough to try to quit, she finds she cannot let go of the Snow case, and everyone chips in to keep her under 24 hour surveillance. The principals in the case have threatened to sue if she doesn’t let go; her parents have had it with her; the boyfriend thinks she’s truly nuts, and then there’s Rae, at 14, who gets kidnapped. In one fell swoop, the book takes an abrupt turn and the chase is on.

Join in the chase, and grab this book before it disappears. Only, tell us what you found out, okay?

Paddle to the Amazon

If you like real-life adventure stories -- and especially if you’ve ever paddled a canoe or a kayak -- you’re going to like Paddle to the Amazon. (I found it spell-binding; and, since I’ve read just about every expedition paddling narrative out there, I’m a pretty hard sell.)

Don Starkell, looking to reconnect with his two teenage sons after a long period of separation, decided on a canoe trip. He did a lot of planning, learned a little Spanish, and loaded Dana, Jeff, and all their gear into a 21’ open canoe for an epic 2-year journey. (Don and Dana stuck it out; Jeff bailed in Mexico and returned to college.)

It was 12,192 miles by lake, river, and ocean, from Winnipeg, Canada, to the mouth of the Amazon at Belem, Brazil. Relying on the kindness of strangers, their own slim resources and fierce determination (plus a good measure of luck,) they prevailed. It was no paddle in the park, this trip. Dana and Don endured hunger, thirst, exhaustion, food poisoning, salt sores, near-drownings, asthma attacks, and hurricanes. They were lost, shot at, arrested, robbed, mistaken for smugglers, nearly murdered, and menaced by crocodiles, wild boar, sharks, piranhas, and pirates.

Did I mention all the yummy meals of coconuts and roasted ants?

Paddle to the Amazon is certainly not a run of the mill father/son bonding story. And in the interests of full disclosure, I have to confess that it is also not among the most popular books here in the Library. But, since I get a chance to push my own favorites once in a while, here it is!

Still undecided? Check out these trailers for a little more persuasion. And if you enjoyed reading Paddle to the Amazon, dive right into Starkell’s second book, Paddle to the Arctic. It won’t disappoint.

As always, tell us what you think. If you’ve read Paddle, tell us whether or not you liked it. If you’re a fellow “true adventure” jinkie, tell us what other books we should try.

Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City

Boy oh boy, if you want to sink your teeth into a good adventure story that begins in a sinkhole, you’ve come to the right pocket park. Pocket park, you know, those tiny fenced in gardens carved out between two brownstones in a city like, say, why yes, New York City. The NYPD cordoned the sinkhole off with yellow construction tape before the morning was over, but that just increased its appeal. Go on, you know you want to find out why Ananka Fishbein went down the hole and whom she discovered there.

My goodness, I haven’t even mentioned Kiki Strike yet. Kirsten Miller has created an incredibly resourceful, undernourished, pale-haired junior spy who takes NYC by storm. In her debut novel, Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City, Miller sends us haring off into the underground tunnels with a troop worthy of their Holmesian appellation: the Irregulars. Dee Dee, Luz, Betty, and Oona, all ex-Girl Scouts, join Ananka and Kiki as they combine their many talents (forgery and explosives, to name a few) to explore the shadowy bowels of New York.

Just think what’s beneath Manhattan Island: tunnels for natural gas, electricity, water, sewer, subways, all interlacing beneath the great skyscrapers and heavy stone buildings of the 19th and 20th centuries. Rats, bodies, vaults, opium dens…well yeah! Where do you think the criminal and moneyed classes hid their loot and drugs and bodies from the police? Underground! Although the other girls don’t realize it at first, Kiki is on a serious, international security mission but she cannot achieve success without their help. And who better to come to her aid, with bombs, costumes, and maps, than a crack team of girls?

Go ahead, be an Irregular and dig deeply into this one, and don't forget the next installment: The Empress's Tomb. You won’t regret it for an instant, except for the, uh, rats…. Drat, where is that pest repellent, Dee Dee?!

Ever had any "underground" adventures? Speak up!

Insatiable - The Compelling Story of Four Teens, Food and Its Power

Samantha, Hannah, Jessica, and Phoebe wrestle with their eating demons in the pages of Eve Eliot’s “self-help novel,” Insatiable. More popular at HHS than its sequel, Ravenous, Insatiable is second only to The Best Little Girl in the World among our eating disorder novels.

Samantha, the blonde, athletic cheerleader, starves, cuts, and vacuums compulsively. We meet her in the first 3 sentences of the book: “Samantha's heart nearly stopped as she realized what Brian was actually telling her. Because there were other students all around them, milling past carrying books and backpacks, she forced herself to breathe evenly, look normal, perfect as always. This is what was expected of her, the blondest cheerleader with the cutest boyfriend, the prettiest girl at Maple Ridge High.”

Phoebe, everybody’s pal and nobody’s girlfriend, is a great student who feels best when she eats. Her fashion photographer Dad has plenty to say about that, and with predictable results.

Jessica is artistic, rebellious, and captivated by style and fashion. She gets along on coffee and Diet Coke, and is now too weak to climb the stairs to English class. Her claim to fame? “I tell myself how special I am,” said Jessica. “I tell myself I’m different because I can be hungry and still not eat.”

And Hannah, another top student, swamped with grief over her Mom’s death, is a beautiful girl who binges and purges to keep herself that way. She is very good at keeping secrets.

Each story has been intertwined, girl by girl, chapter by chapter, to produce a work that is at once gripping, melodramatic, and clinical. Eliot is a practicing psychotherapist, and her novel is based on real case histories. She has also survived an eating disorder, which adds to Insatiable’s authenticity.

While many readers are very enthusiastic about this one, more than a few think Insatiable is too much therapy and not enough plot. What do you think?

Breathing Underwater

Author Alex Flinn interned after law school with the state attorney and tried domestic violence cases, then volunteered at a shelter for battered women and their families. When she gives us Nick’s story -- the anger, jealousy, violence, secrecy, and heartache -- she knows whereof she speaks. But it’s Nick as the narrator who speaks most eloquently for himself.

This is the tale of Nick’s relationship with Caitlyn, related in the journal he now has to keep, by order of the judge. It’s also the story of Nick and his abusive dad and Tommy, his friend for life. Finally, it’s an account of how he struggles to pull his life together, with the help of group counseling and a certain Ms. Wiggins, after he has made his big mistakes.

He told his new girlfriend she couldn’t hang out with her friends anymore, since they didn’t like Nick’s group. “You do want me as your boyfriend, right?” He ridiculed her. “You bitch, you’re just a fat cow.” He tried to keep her glued to his side. Sounds pretty awful, right? Still, Nick managed to charm Caitlyn enough so that they began to see themselves as two of a kind, unlucky teens from seemingly perfect families. Then a long planned group trip to Key West went awry, and our boy was derisive, possessive and drunk, almost killing them both as he drove home. Played the “Don’t you trust me?” and the ”My life is nothing without you.” cards. And then he hit her… and it didn’t happen just once.

Alex Flinn returns to Nick in her novel, Diva, which is actually more Caitlyn’s story. Try it. Life goes on for the two of them, just not together. And do post a response; like Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, this novel is certain to push some buttons.