Reviewed by Chrissie – Page 11

Beyond the Sling: A Real-Life Guide to Raising Confident, Loving Children the Attachment Parenting Way by Mayim Bialik, PhD

I have been hearing much more about Attachment Parenting [AP] in recent months, so I decided to check out a book that several people told me about. Many people will recognize Mayim Bialik as the actress who played “Blossom” [on Blossom] as an adolescent and who now plays “Amy Farrah Fowler” [on Big Bang Theory]. What a lot of people may not know, though, is that Bialik also has a PhD in Neuroscience from UCLA. Based on her background in neuroscience, she and her husband decided that the AP style of parenting was the best possible way to raise their children — and, now, Bialik has become a spokeswoman of sorts for AP.

My son and daughter are 7 years old and 2.5 years old, respectively, so I knew a lot of the book — the information about birth, the postpartum period, and staying sane through infancy, for example — would not necessarily help me anymore. Still, I knew the basic premise of AP would work as a guide for parenting children of any age. Some of the topics I most enjoyed reading about — probably because they were most applicable to me now — were how to let kids be kids, how to use “gentle discipline,” and how parents can balance taking care of their children with being attentive to their own needs. The best part of this book? The fact that Bialik avoids being preachy and acknowledges that different methods work for different families. How refreshing to read a parenting book that didn’t make me feel like a bad mom!

The Pregnancy Project: A Memoir by Gaby Rodriguez with Jenna Glatzer

When I first heard about Gaby Rodriguez, I just knew she would get a book deal and that I would purchase her book for my library. I was impressed that she not only chose to fake a pregnancy for her senior project but that she managed to pull it off until the scheduled reveal at the end of her “second trimester.” Even more impressive than her skill at pulling off this elaborate ruse, though, was her reason for doing this project. Gaby grew up in a community where teen pregnancy was very common. In fact, her own mother and seven older siblings had all become parents as teens. Gaby decided to pretend to “live down to” people’s expectations to raise awareness of the way our culture reacts to teen pregnancy and treats the parents-to-be. In order to get the most accurate results from this experiment, Gaby had to keep her project secret from all but a few people in her life. The only people who knew the truth were her mother, her boyfriend, one of her best friends [who would report back about the reactions of teachers and students], one sister [who would report back about the reactions of family members], and some school administrators who had to approve the project.

It was amazing [albeit disheartening] to read about how quickly people changed their opinions of Gaby. While she was still in the top 5% of her class, and she still belonged to two leadership organizations, many people automatically assumed her life was ruined as soon as they heard she was pregnant. Based on all of the negative attention her boyfriend, Jorge, received, Gaby also came to understand why so many teen dads take off. Being physically able to run away from a situation that everyone assures you will “ruin your life” certainly sounds like an understandable response to me. This book is a good way to get a conversation started about how we, as a society, can do better to prevent teen pregnancy and also how we can better support teen parents so they provide themselves and their children with a better life — and hopefully help their own children break the cycle of teen pregnancy.

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

Mandy Kalinowski is pregnant and scared. She isn’t sure about much in her life, but she is sure that she wants her baby to have a better life than she can provide — so she plans to give her baby up for adoption.

Jill MacSweeny has been lonely and depressed since her father’s sudden, unexpected death about a year before. She has driven away most of her former friends but has a mom and a boyfriend who are ready and willing to support her. The problem is that she doesn’t want to learn how to move on… She just wants things back the way they were.

How do their lives intersect? Jill’s mom, Robin, is planning to adopt Mandy’s baby — without lawyers or an adoption agency. Jill is extremely cynical, to say the least. She is not happy that her mom is trying to adopt a baby, but she is more afraid that Mandy is going to decide to keep the baby and break her mom’s heart. Mandy knows that the Robin is better prepared to raise this baby, but she also fantasizes about running away and keeping/raising the baby herself. It’s hard to imagine anything but a heart-breaking ending to this story, but I promise you will cry HAPPY tears for this one! An amazing story about life, love, and finding your place in the world.

Dead to You by Lisa McMann

Ethan De Wilde was kidnapped from right in front of his house when he was just 7 years old. Merely typing that sentence made my blood run cold because my own little boy just turned 7, and I cannot imagine the heartache and the despair that a family would go through in such an event. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon to hear about stories like this in the news. This particular story, though, seems to have a happy ending. After all, the book opens with 16-year-old Ethan and a CPS worker waiting for his family at an Amtrak station. After being abandoned by the woman who raised him, living in a group home for a while, and then running away and living on the streets, Ethan is finally heading home. But what seems like a fairy tale ending at first glance is actually very complicated.

Ethan can’t seem to recall anything from his early childhood and feels extremely out of place. He wishes he could remember something — anything! — but he just can’t. Mama and Dad accept that it will take some time to adjust to their new situation, but that is little comfort. Gracie, who was born a couple of years after the abduction, accepts Ethan almost immediately. Even though she had been sheltered from the truth, she is ready and willing to open her heart to the long-lost brother she never knew. His brother Blake, on the other hand, remembers all too well what it felt like when Ethan disappeared. Blake is angry because he feels that his brother should have known better than to get into a car with strangers in the first place, and he resents the fact that Ethan’s disappearance and reappearance have over-shadowed nearly his entire life. It makes sense that Blake would react by lashing out in anger, but his behavior was still a bit shocking at times.

This is definitely a book I would recommend for reluctant readers. Between the interesting premise and the short chapters, I absolutely flew through this book! I wish I could say more about what kept me turning pages, but I don’t want to spoil the story for anyone… Just know that there is something BIG and keep reading until you find it. Trust me — you’ll know when you get there.

Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt

What’s even better than a companion book for The Wednesday Wars? A companion book that works just fine as a stand alone book! (Some people call this book a sequel, but I am calling it a “companion” book because it has a different main character and doesn’t require you to read the first book in order to understand what’s going on.) There IS a bit of a shout-out to Holling Hoodhood, which is nice, but this book focuses on Doug Swieteck — one of Holling’s friends whose family has to move upstate, to a small town called Marysville, when his dad’s bad attitude causes him his job.

We learn early on that Doug’s father is a jerk; he treats his family like trash and doesn’t grasp the simple notion that the world doesn’t owe him anything that he didn’t work to earn. Doug’s mom is really passive and pretty much ignores her husband’s faults while trying her best not to anger him. And then there are Doug’s brothers — one who is serving in Vietnam, and one who moves with the family and then falls in with the local herd of jerks. Luckily, Doug meets Lil Spicer and gets a job delivering groceries for her dad’s deli. Through this job, he gets out of the house, forms relationships with some of the townspeople, and makes a little bit of money to boot. There are several points where things get really rough for Doug, but he always manages to find solace in the local library where he is intrigued by, and learns to draw, the birds found in the John James Audubon book kept on display. With its complex characters, rich setting, and the message of hope and perseverance, I think this book would appeal to nearly anyone who likes a good story.

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

After trying to read Going Bovine and feeling like I was too dumb to understand what the heck was going on, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read Beauty Queens. Luckily, I talked to a coworker who thought this book would be perfect for me, and I decided to give the audiobook a chance. Shortly after finishing this book, I discovered a blog post entitled “Ten Things I Want to Tell Teenage Girls” and it was as if this entire book was condensed into number 10 . . . in a much less sarcastic way. I think that might be a big part of what I loved about this book — the sarcasm, that is. I am an *extremely* sarcastic person, and I just love some tongue-in-cheek satire.

Have you ever asked yourself, “What would happen if a plane full of beauty queens crash-landed on a deserted island?” Then, this is the book for you! Beauty Queens examines consumer culture, reality TV, politics, rom-coms, the beauty industry, and religion while exploring issues of gender, race, sexuality, beauty, and identity. While it’s hard to believe that a unified storyline can emerge from a story that tackles so many issues, it really came together nicely. Although the issues covered in this book are totally serious, Bray manages to be anything but serious and still makes her point. (She also manages to sound like a full cast of readers in the audiobook!) I wish I could assign this book as required reading to every insecure girl/woman I know so they could start to see how ridiculous it is that we allow society to put so much pressure on us to be “perfect.” One of my favorite lines was from an advertizement for Lady ‘Stache Off — “Because there’s nothing wrong with you . . . that can’t be fixed.” I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of our culture telling me that I need to “fix” myself. I hope to teach my daughter (and every teen girl I work with) that we’re all beautiful just the way we are thankyouverymuch!

Happy Reading!

The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking: Book 1) by Patrick Ness

Some books were just meant to be audiobooks. I never actually read physical books of Feed or Thirteen Reasons Why, so I cannot say for sure, but I can’t imagine that reading them would have been anywhere close to the experience I had listening to them. I don’t think I would have done “the feed” justice on my own, and I firmly believe that listening to Hannah’s tapes along with Clay helped me to experience his emotional reactions much better than reading the text would have. I decided to listen to this book because my current audiobook was almost over and this one was sitting on the NEW shelf. I recalled that it got a good review, but I didn’t remember anything about it. Well . . . I am really glad I “accidentally” took out the audiobook instead of reading the book because it definitely reminded me a lot of Feed!

Todd Hewitt lives in Prentisstown, a small settlement on New World. His people came to New World to escape religious persecution, but they found plenty of new problems upon arrival. The two main problems were the Spackle (lifeforms indigenous to the planet) and a germ that causes “Noise” (the projection of one’s thoughts so that other people can hear and/or see them). In this first book of the Chaos Walking trilogy, we learn two very important details: all of the women of Prentisstown are dead, and the boys “become men” at 13. Todd, the last remaining boy, is feeling anxious and confused about his impending 13th birthday because of all the secrets that are kept from the boys — including details about the actual ritual that will complete his transformation from boy to man. When, all of the sudden, Prentisstown becomes unsafe for Todd, his adoptive parents (Ben and Cillian — pronounced Killian) send him out into the wilderness with his dog (Manchee), a hunting knife, his mother’s diary, and a map that should lead him to another settlement.

There was a lot to set up in this first book, but it was not overly difficult to follow. Plus, the action and adventure work well to keep readers hooked while bits and pieces of the history of Prentisstown are revealed. Definitely a book/audiobook I would recommend to fans of dystopian science fiction.

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber

Because Perry wants to get into Columbia, he has pretty much always played by the rules. He understands that he needs to get good grades and that obtaining a recommendation by doing an internship at his father’s law firm is very important. He works his butt off most of the time, but he’s still a teenager and, therefore, wants to do fun things once in a while. That’s why he belongs to a band. And even though many teenagers look forward to their senior prom, Perry and his friends have other plans for that night — they’ve finally lined up a gig at a club in New York City! Unfortunately for Perry, his dad doesn’t care. His dad wants him to bring Gobija [the foreign exchange student who has been staying with their family] to prom.

If Gobija had been the teen movie stereotype — hot and anxious to date a geeky American boy — Perry might have been happy about this arrangement. Since she was dorky and standoffish, though, Perry was looking forward to the end of her stay and tried his best to weasel his way out of this date. It was rather obvious that things went a bit differently than expected since the book opened with Perry saying, “You shot me!” The bad news is that, after the initial teaser, I had to go back to the beginning of the story to find out how the heck he got shot. The good news is that the story moved so quickly that I got back to the wild ride before too long.

The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha

The subtitle gives quite a good idea of the types of things you’re going to find in this book — Snow Days, Bakery Air, Finding Money in Your Pocket, and Other Simple, Brilliant Things — but there are just WAY too many awesome things for a simple summary to reveal just how awesome this book is. Entries range from a few sentences to a few pages, and there are a lot of photos to illustrate the awesome topics at hand. I loved that the author had such a positive outlook and that he found beauty in so many simple things. I also loved that the entries were short enough that I could grab this book and read a bit even when I knew I would soon be interrupted — like in the doctor’s office waiting room, while waiting for dinner to finish baking, and when my kids were playing in the bath just to name a few. Some of my favorites include finding extra fries in the bottom of the bag, illegal naps, and getting gas right before the price goes up (which actually happened to me about 2 days before I read that entry!). Not quite sold on this book yet? Try checking out his blog — http://1000awesomethings.com

Catching Jordan by Miranda Kenneally

Let me begin this review by stating, for the record, that I do not consider myself a “football fan.” I don’t hate football, but I don’t go out of my way to watch football either. I literally watched the Super Bowl for the commercials and half-time show while ignoring the game to get food and drink refills! I also want to mention that many people will try to compare this book to Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Dairy Queen books, since they also have a female main character who plays football, but this book isn’t just a Dairy Queen redux.

Jordan is much more than a girl who happens to play football — she is the quarterback and captain of one of the best high school football teams in Tennessee, a possible recruit for the University of Alabama [Roll Tide!], and the daughter of an NFL player. Football is in her blood and it has been her life for nearly all of her life, so she is very upset when a new quarterback moves to her school during the fall of her senior year. This is precisely when she needs to prove herself to college recruiters, and Ty is both a threat to her playing time AND a [really cute] distraction. Add the fact that Jordan’s dad isn’t really supportive of her playing football, throw in a changing relationship with her best friend [who is a guy], and you get a whole lot of story in one book. Luckily, it’s not too much to keep straight and it’s all very believable. The best part? There’s enough about practice and games to keep football fans interested without overdoing it for people who couldn’t care less. A great coming of age story with a side of teen love!

Payback Time by Carl Deuker

Mitch True has wanted to be a reporter ever since his dad took him to see All the President’s Men when he was little [in a theater that shows old movies, of course]. He has been on the school paper, The Lincoln Light, since freshman year. He assumed he would become the editor during senior year because his only competition, Alyssa Hanson, was not a very talented writer. Alyssa got the editor position based on a popular vote and then moved Mitch from lead reporter to sports. Although he was initially unhappy, Mitch quickly realized that Alyssa made a great editor and that the sports writer position was likely to give him a lot more exposure before graduation. But this story is not just about how some kid learned to adapt when his life plan didn’t pan out. It’s a whole lot juicier than that!

When Mitch and the sports photographer, Kimi Yon, went to interview the quarterback, they noticed something fishy about a new player. He was throwing amazing passes before practice started but pretended to be only mediocre when people started paying attention to him. He also looked older than the rest of the guys on the team. Everyone knew Coach McNulty was unhappy coaching high school football and wantedto get hired on at a college . . . so, could he be cheating by bringing in a guy who was ineligible to play? Mitch and Kimi decided to dig up the truth and to get this story out. But there’s just one problem — they’re not even close to guessing this guy’s secret and have no idea how much danger they could be in if they dig too deep.

King of the Mild Frontier: an Ill-advised Autobiography by Chris Crutcher

Chris Crutcher often writes about dysfunction, and he does so well with it because he writes what he knows. He didn’t have a terrible childhood per se, but he had major anger-management issues, an alcoholic mother, and a hard-working father who tried to keep up appearances no matter what — not to mention a trickster of an older brother who got Chris into a whole lot more trouble than he would have managed on his own. As an adult, Crutcher worked as a child and family therapist, and he did his best to help other people work past their anger to fix the messes they’d made of their lives. I liked hearing how the young Chris was already fond of speaking his mind and speaking out against injustice, and I really appreciated learning about some of the real-life people he had worked with who affected him so much that he incorporated their stories in his novels.

This autobiography was often hilarious, but sometimes brought me to tears. Between the candid writing style and the fact that Crutcher narrated the audiobook himself, I sometimes felt like he was sitting in the passenger seat and telling me his stories in person. The only thing I didn’t like was that it was over so quickly! Still, I can appreciate the fact that this book will be an easier sell to reluctant readers for this very reason. If you’ve read any of Crutcher’s books, you’ll surely recognize the people who’ve inspired him. And if you haven’t yet read his books, this autobiography will surely entice you!

A Room on Lorelei Street by Mary E. Pearson

Zoe Beth Buckman has got more than her fair share of troubles. Ever since her dad died, her mom has been a wreck. Her parents were always drinkers, but now it is clear to Zoe that her mom is an alcoholic who is going to drink herself to death if she doesn’t change her ways. Zoe’s grandmother insists that she needs to stay and take care of her ailing mother, but Zoe is sick and tired of it all — sick of the secrets and tired of being more of a mom than a daughter. After things at school start to be affected by her home life, Zoe decides that she needs to get out on her own. She finds a room for rent on Lorelei Street, but she isn’t quite sure how she will be able to make ends meet. All she knows is that she needs to get out before she is sucked any further into the vortex of her mother’s misery, and she is willing to do almost anything to make it work.

Blood Wounds by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Willa has it pretty good. Her mom got remarried, but her step-dad [Jack] is a genuinely nice guy who loves her as if she is his own daughter. She even gets along really well with her step-sisters and their mom. Unfortunately, Willa’s happy little life is about to fall apart. When her mom’s best friend calls from Texas, freaking out about a guy named Budge, a missing twin, and an Amber Alert, Willa starts to realize that there is a lot she doesn’t know about the life she left behind. As it turns out, Budge is her birth father’s nickname. The twin is one of Budge’s daughters from his second marriage. And the Amber Alert was put in place because Budge’s wife and two other daughters were found murdered… Stabbed to death. If that wasn’t freaky enough, Budge and his daughter were potentially sighted at a gas station along a highway that leads to the town where Willa and her mom now live. How do you even begin to process that information?!?

Bumped by Megan McCafferty

In a world where the Human Sterility Virus (HSV) causes nearly everyone to become sterile after the age of 18, teenage pregnancy becomes both necessary AND trendy. It’s pretty disturbing to think of a world in which teenage girls are basically pimped out as incubators, but McCafferty manages to keep the tone light and funny overall. I especially enjoyed the “FunBumps” (complete with moving “babies” inside) and the t-shirts for tweens that proclaimed they were “Born to Breed.” Some people have accused this book of glorifying teenage pregnancy, but I think they got it completely wrong. If anything, this book derides our culture’s current obsession with teen pregnancy. Shows like 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom, while reportedly intending to show the harsh reality of teen pregnancy, have actually resulted in the glamorization of teen pregnancy. Need proof? How about news stories about pregnancy pacts, girls trying to get pregnant to get on the show, and the surge in popularity of the names “Maci” and “Bentley” (the names of a featured teen mom and her son).

Beyond the insanity of HSV and teen pregnancy for hire, there is another level of complexity with twin sisters (Melody and Harmony) who were separated at birth and reunited as teens. Harmony was raised in Goodside, a highly religious, gated community in Pennsylvania, where she was raised with the singular goal of being a good wife and mother. Melody grew up in a “normal” community in New Jersey, where she was given every advantage toward the end of attending the best college and bringing in a large amount of money as a surrogate. I cannot even begin to describe how awkward it is when Harmony comes to town to try and “save” Melody from her life of sin, but I can assure you that the questions raised by this book will stick with you long after you put it down.