Posts by Emma Carbone

Fifteen-year-old Clary Fray is almost content with her boring real life in Brooklyn. Trips to the Pandemonium Club for dancing and people watching with her best friend Simon add enough excitement, even if Clary is too shy to talk to anyone.

Do you have something to say?

Are you looking for a place to say it?

Do you like writing poetry?

Do you want to learn more about poems and Zines?

Seventeen-year-old Ginny's life feels like a waking dream. Or maybe a nightmare. It all seemed so different when Aidan first came crashing into her life.

At least Turner has the sea breeze to keep him company. Being a sneaky, playful breeze it soon leads Turner to Malaga Island and his first friend in Maine.

Lizzie Bright Griffin is Turner's opposite in almost every way. She has lived on Malaga all her life, just like her parents and her granddaddy. A community founded by former slaves, Malaga is a poor island and largely seen as a blemish on the landscape by Phippsburg's elite. But to Lizzie it is the most wonderful place in the world. It is home.

Turner and Lizzie have every reason to hate each other. Instead they become fast friends. Soon enough Turner can't imagine his life without knowing Lizzie or Malaga. 

A boy walks through the train station like a ghost tending to the station’s numerous clocks. Orphaned and alone, he travels through the hidden passages of the station making sure the clocks run on time to avoid the notice of the Station Inspector.

He does not like tending the clocks by himself or living alone in the station. He especially hates stealing what he needs. But if he is to finish his work, he has no choice. He has to remain invisible.

Only two kinds of people live in Gatlin, South Carolina: the stupid and the stuck. The others move on to better places. The Wates live there because they always have. They live there even though recent years have brought the family more bad memories than good.

The year is 1914 and Europe is preparing for war. Although the events leading to a world war are sudden, the lines have long been drawn between the Clanker and Darwinist nations. While Austria-Hungary and Germany put their faith in steam-driven iron machines and guns, the British Darwinists fabricate monstrous beasties as their weapons and ships.

Fanboy wants three things more than anything in the world--he'll even tell you two of them. But there are also things that Fanboy needs, especially now that his sophomore year is morphing into his own personal hell.

Senior Goddess Dina Jurgens doesn't know he exists and his part-time-best-friend/full-time-jock, Cal, is distant. Nothing new there.

But at home his pregnant mother and stepfather (that would the Step-Fascist to anyone paying attention) are anxiously awaiting the birth of his half-brother or half-sister. As if that could make them into a real family. School isn't much better once the bullies and the Jock Jerks decide to make Fanboy their own personal target 

If nothing else, the Chengs know how to save face. So to everyone else, Syrah Cheng's life looks like a dream come true. Her father is a billionaire, her mother is beautiful and always buying her fancy clothes (and custom-designed snowboarding gear). Between that and the mansion and private jet, it really seems like Syrah has it all. But . . .

The worst part of having it all is having to deal with it all--the good, the bad, and the just plain weird.

Syrah knows better than most that appearances can be deceiving. She almost never sees her parents, her half-siblings hate her, and it turns out real friends are not that easy to find when you can buy everything else. What Syrah 

Tamsin Greene comes from a very Talented family in Once a Witch (2009) by Carolyn MacCullough. You won't find any math geniuses among the Greene family. And no one is exceptionally athletic. But if you ever break anything, be it bones or fine china, Uncle Chester can fix it. Her father can make your grass grow and the sun shine, while her mother can move almost faster than the eye can see. That's because Tamsin comes from a long line of very Talented witches.

Earlier this week I posted a review here of Justine Larbalestier's wonderful new book Liar which had a bit of cover controversy because the book was slated to be released in the USA with a white model on the cover--despite the main character being very obviously black. I also received a wonderful comment on that post asking how such things could happen and if authors have approval on their covers.

I'm not even sure where to start this review there's so much going on with this book. The plot in Justine Larbelestier's Liar (2009) is so intricate and crazy awesome that the author has asked readers to please not post spoilers in their reviews (I wouldn't know how to explain the spoilers even if I did want to post them). Aside from that, the book has gone through three different covers and created a bit of controversy on the way. It doesn't relate to the story, but I think if you want to understand this book you really need to know about all the covers.

When her parents decide they can no longer live in Nixon's US, Bliss is shipped off to Atlanta to live with her grandmother while her parents flee to Canada in Bliss (2008) by Lauren Myracle. The year is 1969 and after spending most of her life living on a commune, or wherever else her parents decided to hang their hats, Bliss is ill-prepared for conventional life in a big city.

Bliss isn't too worried when she starts at the prestigious Crestview High School though because she's spent a lot of time watching TV. Surely The Andy Griffith Show will tell her everything she needs to know about life in the "civilized" world of non-hippies, right?

Vivian Vande Velde is basically my hero. She is a master at taking traditional fairy-tale-like themes and making them fresh and totally unique. Companions of the Night (1995) does that for the vampire story.

Kerry's little brother, Ian, had a simple request: drive to the laundromat to retrieve Ian's stuffed bear. Kerry knew all the reasons she should tell Ian no (she had a big test to study for, it was the middle of the night, she only had a driver's permit and shouldn't be in a car without a licensed driver), but then Ian started to cry and Kerry knew she couldn't say no--not if Ian was going to cry. It was late, there would be no traffic. Getting the bear would be 

The first thing to keep in mind about Swoon (2009) by Nina Malkin is that it's a sexy book. By which I mean racy. The second thing to keep in mind is that it's totally nuts. More about that after the summary.

Nothing ever happens in Swoon, Connecticut. Just ask Candice, Swoon's newest (transplanted) resident. There are many reasons Dice would rather be in her native New York City but the fact remains that she is in Swoon. And strange as this land of cookie-cutter preps and family values is, Dice is getting used to it.

Everything changes when Dice's cousin, the beautifully and tragically perfect Penelope, nearly dies. In those moments between life and death, 

Strong-willed and more knowledgeable than most everyone when it comes to horses, Pell Ridley cannot reconcile herself to the stifling life of a married woman—not after seeing the endless monotony of poverty, child birth, and death played out in her own parents' household. Desperate for something more, Pell does the only thing she can. She leaves.

Meg Rosoff's The Bride's Farewell (2009) starts on August twelfth, eighteen hundred and fifty something, the day Pell is to be married. She gets out of bed, kisses her sisters goodbye and goes outside to tell her horse, Jack, that they are leaving in the hopes of finding work at Salisbury Fair with one of the numerous horse 

"Everyone thinks it was because of the snow. And in a way, I suppose that's true."

When Mia and her family go out for a drive that snowy morning, none of them realize everything is about to change in If I Stay (2009) by Gayle Forman. It was a freak accident. A random act. But suddenly, a truck swerves into their car. The next thing Mia knows she is staring down at the dead bodies of her mother and father. She can't find her younger brother, Teddy. What Mia does find is her own broken body being rushed to a hospital.

Before the accident Mia had a lot of decisions to make about her future. Should she follow her first love—music—to Juilliard in New York? Should 

Graceling (2008) by Kristin Cashore is, in many ways, the fantasy novel I have been hoping to stumble upon all summer.

In the world of Graceling certain people are graced in their youth with a powerful ability. Some might call these Gremacelings lucky, blessed even. But Katsa knows that her own devastating Grace of killing is more burden than blessing. Forced to do the bidding of her uncle, King of the Middluns, Katsa is dispatched to dole out tangible examples of the King's disfavor.

Katsa lives her life apart from the rest of the court in her uncle's castle, avoided both because of her fearsome Grace and her startling eyes--one blue and one green--that 

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (2009) is Katherine Howe's first novel. Given the plot, comparisons between the author's life and her fictional heroine are inevitable, so they might as well be addressed sooner rather than later.

Howe is herself in a PhD program for American and New England History. Based on various family member's genealogy research, Howe's ancestors are also Elizabeth Howe and Elizabeth Proctor. Anyone familiar with Arthur Miller's classic play The Crucible will likely recognize the Proctor name. If not, let it be said that both Elizabeth Howe and Elizabeth Proctor were accused of practicing witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts during the