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First of all, I was given the chance to read an advance copy of this book for review purposes. I have not been compensated in any way (other than being given a PDF copy of this book) and my opinion on the book are entirely my own.

Second, this book contains depictions and discussion of disordered eating/anorexia and cancer and may be triggering for some people.

15 year old Diana Keller is having a really hard time. Her mom is sick, incredibly sick, with cancer and that’s a lot to deal with. Her friends are maturing and changing and she’s feeling left behind and left out. And she’s tired of being Fat Diana. She meets Jesse, a new arrival in their tiny rural town, and they start dating, and she wants to be perfect for him. So she starts doing something… she starts exercising, a lot. And she stops eating.

It… doesn’t really help.

This is a pretty unflinching look at ED and the way it impacts people. Arens really digs into the mindset of ED, the obsession, the logic and illogical. It’s beautifully written, but sometimes hard to read because it’s so meaty. Despite the meatiness, however, there’s a lot of humor in the book, and a lot of hope. Diana is, ultimately, lucky: she has some very good friends, and a very close and supportive family. A lot of people notice that Something Is Wrong and do their best to help her. Arens also draws parallels between acceptable ED (young men trying to drop weight to get into a lower weight class for sports) and unacceptable ED (young women trying to drop weight because women are supposed to take up as little space as possible).

If you’re of a certain age, you might have spent Junior High and High School inundated with “problem books” or “issue books,” edifying fiction novels usually featuring teen aged women who have SERIOUS problems in an unending stream. Their parents have cancer or are dead, they have cancer, they want to be concert pianists but break their arms on the weekend before The Big Audition, someone is beating them, someone is raping them, they can’t stop shop lifting, etc. They were depressing books. It would be easy to glance at this book and see “mom has cancer” and “ED” and assume it’s more of the same. It really is not, however. There’s far too much hope, humor, and support in the book. Additionally, giving a character’s mom cancer is usually a way to write mom out of the picture while giving the protag some big drama thing that shapes them. Arens manages to center Diana’s relationship with her mom. Her mom has cancer, but she’s still mom, and she’s still important.

There are two other things I adored about the book. One is Diana’s best guy friend. They love each other very much and trust and respect each other and are siblings with different parents, basically. They are very close emotionally and comfort each other physically (hugs, cuddles) but there’s no romantic pressure or expectations. I really hate the idea that men and women can’t be FRIENDS because SEX/ROMANCE IS INEVITABLE. So it’s super refreshing to see a positive, affirming heterosexual relationship. And speaking of sex, another thing I liked is that Diana has sex and doesn’t get shamed/punished for it. She worries briefly about the consequences of pregnancy and if her boyfriend will still respect her, but he does. She worries her parents will find out, but they don’t. (and if they did, well, they stick by her in every other way so I doubt finding out she got her bone on would be the end of the world) One of her best friends is well known for “kissing” every available guy she sees, and another has a very serious boyfriend and spends a lot of time behind closed doors with him. Neither gets in trouble/shamed for their actions. Whaaat! Young women have sex and it’s not the end of the world!?! ADORE.

That said, I think my absolute favorite scene in the book is Diana’s snippy Passive-Aggressive “attack” on a teacher she doesn’t like. She cracks open “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations” and slips a saying about hypocrisy under his door. Oh, nerdy teen angst, I adore and identify with you!

The post The Obvious Game appeared first on Thoughtful Consumption.

I have a kid who might be starting pre-k next year which means, as we live in Chicago, if we want to get him into a gifted/classical/accelerated/magnet/etc school we need to test him this December. And there’s a lot of politics, both personal and other, about choosing a selective school versus neighborhood school, testing, everything. So Nesko and I have been doing a lot of thinking and talking and reading about education and options. “A Family Of Readers: The Book Lover’s Guide To Children’s and YA Literature,” edited by Roger Sutton and Martha Paravano, was a welcome diversion amongst all the nonfiction heaviness I’ve been handling lately.

Part of the reason it’s so welcome and not-heavy is that Nesko and I are both readers. We are already doing pretty much everything that will ensure Niko will grow up to love and enjoy books. We have a large variety of books for him, we read to him frequently, we tell him stories and sing him songs, we read instead of watching tv, we go to the library regularly… Look. We’re book nerds. This book is basically written for book nerds. We are the target audience for this book. You probably are too.

And unlike a lot of books about education in general that I’ve been reading, it’s not judgmental or preachy or weirdly Conservative or racist/sexist/classist/homophobic out of nowhere. They define a family as “at least two people who care about each other” and define reading as “books.” And those “books” include comic books, statistics books, audio books, fiction books, fantasy books, all the books that are so often sneered at and looked down upon while being exactly the books that kids enjoy and that can best foster a love of reading. I mean, the prologue talks about the much-loved syndicated comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes,” and how Calvin’s parents are frequently and consistently seen with books, reading books, with books right near them.

Everyone involved in this book obviously loves books, loves reading, loves sharing their love of books and reading, and loves kids. It’s a delightful and thoughtful book that breaks book categories down into roughly-age-appropriate areas like “reading to them” versus “reading with them” and “reading on their own.” It talks about what makes a good picture book, biography, fantasy book, book about dinosaurs. It talks about the books marketed toward girls and books marketed toward boys. It talks about fostering a love of poetry. And it gives examples of recommended books and why they’re recommended.

I plucked this book from the library on a whim. It caught my eye on the “new arrivals: nonfiction” shelf. It’s so good I plan on buying it and referring to it frequently throughout Niko’s reading career.

If you’re reading this via RSS or dreamwidth or livejournal syndication, check out the original source at http://www.brigidkeely.com/reviews for an embedded googlebooks preview as well.

Let me get this out of the way before I say anything else.

If your objection to a book is OH GOSH THERE ARE HOMOSEXUAL PEOPLE  AND THEY ARE TREATED AS HUMAN BEINGS then I don’t want to know you. If you think including gay couples and persons of color in a book is “political correctness run amuck,” then you’re welcome to find the door. Not surprisingly, most negative reviews of “Everywhere Babies” by Susan Meyers, which portrays families that are not composed entirely of apparently white apparently straight people, pick just that to complain about.

“Everywhere Babies” is a rhyming book about babies. The text is gentle and lively and the babies are adorable and do a lot of different things (walk, run, eat, sleep, smile, cry). My 2.5 year old loves this book. He likes the text, he likes the rhythms of it, and he LOVES the babies. He identifies some of the babies (fat babies versus thin babies, for example; crying babies versus happy babies), he narrates what the babies are doing, he makes up stories about the babies. It’s a pretty solid hit with him, something he requests re-reads of.

As mentioned– as, I think, it’s known for– the book depicts same-sex couples parenting babies/children as well as just walking around, and there are black-looking babies, Hispanic-looking babies, Asian-looking babies, etc. along with the white-looking babies. There are also what appear to be mixed-race families. So if that’s something you’re looking for in a book, this one has it, and not in an OBVIOUS way. It’s not “Heather Has A Black Mommy And A White Daddy,” it’s not the SUBJECT of the book, it’s just there. Not commented on. Treated as normal. Another thing treated as normal is the idea that male-appearing people will do child care duties without female-appearing people around. It’s not all mommies and babies. There’s a lot of dads and grandpas taking babies on walks, feeding them, etc. So there’s a hearty dose of gender balance as well, which I haven’t seen touched on as much in reviews (except, again, someone complaining on amazon that OH MY GOSH BABIES NEED THEIR MOMMIES and shouldn’t leave the house before they’re a full year old. Say it with me. WHAT.)

In summary, it’s a good solid book with well written text, a high readability level, and lush artwork. We checked this out of the library but I’d rate it as a “buy” quality book, and one I’d give to other babies as a gift.

Handling the Undead, by John Ajvide Lindqvist, is advertised as a zombie novel. But it’s not about zombies, not really. I mean, there are people who died who become animated again, who imitate life, but the book isn’t really about them. And they aren’t the zombies popularly portrayed in media. They don’t hunger for brains, for instance.

The book opens with a bit about the weather. It’s been unusually hot in Sweden. Everyone has headaches. And then the electricity goes on and stays on, all appliances coming to life (so to speak), unable to be turned off. There’s a fantastic bit where a character is running, and his cellphone’s battery gains an extra bar of power as the battery refuels itself without being connected to anything. The weather breaks, the headaches ease off, and the dead start coming back to life.

Well. They animate. They imitate life. But they aren’t alive.

Handling the Undead isn’t really a story about zombies. It’s a story about death and dying and grief, about the human condition and souls, about letting go and moving on. It follows 3.5 story lines: David and his young son and the death of his wife Eva, the love of his life; Gustav Mahler and his daughter and dead grandson; Psychic grandmother and -daughter Elvy and Flora (whose storyline involves them separating then reuniting, hence 3.5 story lines). The book starts off with a bang and keeps the pace up consistently until the end, when it slows down and becomes more contemplative. It’s an emotionally difficult book to read, diving deep into emotionally troubling waters. The characters go through events that are both unusual and specific to them (I mean, there are ‘reliving,’ the formerly dead walking around, that is not an everyday occurrence) but also universal. Death. Loss. Pain. I cried several times while reading this book, and then kept going.

I highly recommend this book. It’s not at all the standard gory zombie fare, and most of the bits I as a reader flinched from were emotional bits, not visceral ones. There’s horror elements in it, well crafted, but it’s primarily an emotional journey, and a very well written one at that.