2006

Let's take a look at Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything (2006) by E. Lockhart:

For Gretchen Yee life as an artificial redhead is anything but glamorous. A student at the Manhattan High School for the Arts (New Yorkers think: La Guardia) with girls wearing unitards or saris and cliques like the Art Rats, Gretchen feels too ordinary to belong. She stands out not because she’s special or unique but because she’s ordinary save for her stop-sign-red hair.

Gretchen is also lonely and confused. Her best friend is more and more distant and the boys at her school--like her crush the fantastically amazing and artistic and offbeat Titus? Well, they don’t make any sense either.

Then Gretchen makes an idle wish to spend one week as a fly on the wall of the boy’s locker room not expecting much to change.* But sometimes, wishes don’t like to stay idle. Sometimes they like to come true.  read more »

Before Hayao Miyazaki made Howl's Moving Castle into a feature length animated film in 2006 (2004 if you saw it in Japan), it was a book written by Diana Wynne Jones in 1986. Due to the inherent difficulties of creating an animated film, Miyazaki greatly abridged and adjusted the plot of the novel for his movie. I happened to enjoy both film and novel but after reading the book I realized that the plot is extremely different in the novel--enough that the book and movie become completely different viewing experiences.

Anyway, that's all I'm going to say about the movie. On to the discussion of the book:

Sophie lives "in the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility exist." In other words, all of the traditional fairy tale stories are real. Not so bad, except that Sophie Hatter is the eldest of three sisters, which everyone knows means Sophie is doomed to failure should she ever set out to seek her fortunes. Sophie is resigned to her fate--living obscurely, and less than successfully, working in the family hat shop. Except that this is not a traditional fairy tale and events soon intervene to set Sophie on a very unexpected course indeed for an eldest daughter.  read more »

A few months ago I predicted on my non-NYPL blog that Paper Towns (2008) would be receiving a nod from the Printz committee at the 2009 awards ceremony. Failing that, I was certain that after nabbing a National Book Award, What I Saw and How I Lied (2008) would take a Printz award/honor.

You can therefore imagine my surprise when it was neither of my predicted titles but Melina Marchetta's Jellicoe Road* (2008**) that won the 2009 Printz Award for excellence in young adult literature. Being a fan of Marchetta's previous novels Looking for Alibrandi (1992) and especially Saving Francesca (2005) you can also imagine my embarrassment upon realizing one of my favorite authors had published a new book without my realizing it.

The only solution, of course, was to immediately procure a copy from the library and read it as soon as possible.  read more »