Eve and Adam by Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate was recommended to me by a writer friend who knows I like science fiction, especially when it dabbles in genetic engineering.  
 
The science in this book is pretty farfetched.  So is the romance and even the action/suspense, I guess.  It’s fun, though!  Just don’t read Eve and Adam as an
instruction manual or a roadmap to the future.  It’s called fiction for a reason.

Evening (Eve) Spiker’s leg is severed when she’s hit by a streetcar, but her mother doesn’t want her to remain at the hospital for treatment. That’s both Eve’s and the reader’s first clue that something strange is going on here.  
 
Eve’s mother whisks her off to the biotech company she runs, where Eve is the only patient in the hospital wing.  Hmmm, why do they even have a hospital wing if there are normally no patients?  
 
Solo, a boy about Eve’s age keeps showing up.  He works and lives at the facility.  (Strange thing number three.) Solo takes an interest in Eve, which is not so strange.  They are the only young people around.  
 
He pushes her wheelchair for her, taking her to the pastime project her mother has arranged to keep her busy. It’s a computer game where you genetically engineer a person by picking out specific genes for the traits you
want this person to have.  Blue eyes, brown hair, athletic build, whatever.

Eve begins to build the boy of her dreams.  In pixels on a screen, of course.  Not for real.  But he looks so real on that screen.

And so begins the adventure.

Suffice it to say, there are bad guys and gals misusing technology, who think their brilliance puts them above the law or any moral qualms.  Eve, Solo, and their friends discover a secret project taking place at Spiker Biopharmaceuticals, and this puts them in great danger.

 Eve and Adam is recommended for grades 8 and up.

 Happy reading!

The Higher Power of Lucky is the 2007 Newbery Award winner by Los Angeles County librarian Susan Patron.  There was a big hullaballoo at award time because of Patron’s use of the word “scrotum”on the first page, but frankly, it seems like a non-issue. 


The word is used to describe the site of a rattlesnake bite on a dog trying to save his beloved (and inebriated) master, Short Sammy.  Sammy’s dog’s excruciating pain was the “rock bottom” event that convinced Short Sammy to join AA and sober up.

But Short Sammy is not the focus of the story, and neither is his dog.  Eight-year-old Lucky is our imperfect heroine in The Higher Power of Lucky. 

Lucky lives in Hard Pan, California with her guardian, Brigitte (pronounced Bri-JEET, the French way).  Lucky spends a lot of time peeking through a hole in the fence, listening in on a multitude of stories told at different “anonymous” twelve-step meetings for various addictions.  She becomes convinced that if she can just hit rock bottom she’ll be able to find her “Higher Power.”  Then she’ll understand what life is all about.

“Rock bottom” comes when Lucky determines that Brigitte is planning to abandon her and return to France.  Since Lucky’s father left when she was born, and her real mother was killed unexpectedly two years ago,
Lucky has come to expect loss.  This would be just one more.  But what to do?  
 
Lucky decides to run away.

Hard Pan has a population of only 42, yet quirky characters abound.  Even so, what I found most appealing was Lucky’s aspiration to be a scientist, and her love of the desert and the creatures living there.

This book introduces readers to the natural history of the desert without seeming to teach or preach.  Lucky just finds these great bugs crawling about, and shoos a snake out of the dryer, and survives a dust storm,
and removes a cholla cactus ball from a little boy’s foot.  She lives in a realistic desert, something I found
interesting.

Newbery Award winning books are chosen by a committee of adults, not by children.  Some have argued that recent Newbery Award winners are not necessarily what most children want to read.  
 
This may be true, but children, like adults, have varied interests and tastes ranging from Captain Underpants through Matt Christopher’s sports fiction, on to Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events, and many many more.  Some children even like Newberry Award winners!

My theory – any reading is better than no reading.  Kid’s who read for fun, whether it’s comic books or thousand-page novels, are perfecting an art that will help them in any subject that uses a text book. 

As a great woman and fine teacher (my mother) once said, “If you can read you can figure out how to do
just about anything!”

The Higher Power of Lucky, brief at only 133 pages, is recommended for ages 10 to 12.

 Happy Reading!

Three times Lucky is a murder mystery/comedy set in of Tupelo Landing, a southern town full of quirky characters.  Miss Moses Lobeau is a “rising sixth grader,” which means she’ll be in sixth grade next fall.

She got the unlikely name of Moses from the Colonel, who found her as a newborn, floating down the river tied to a raft in “the meanest hurricane in history.” Moses is still looking for her “Upstream  Mother” but in the meantime the Colonel and Miss Lana make a mighty fine family, odd as they are.

The Colonel showed up in town for the first time on that very same hurricane-rattled night.  He’d just slammed his car into a tree and stumbled down to the river when found baby Mo. He lost all memory of his past that night, but marched firmly into the future with baby Mo in his arms.

 Miss Lana, who was also new to town, took right up with the Colonel, caring for baby Mo and running the town café in her own exotic way.

The book begins with the question of how Mo wound up floating down a river in a hurricane, and who
her upstream mother might be.  Plus there’s the mystery of the Colonel’s past and even where Miss Lana came from.  
 
Things get even more interesting when the town’s grumpy miser turns up dead, and a big city police detective
arrives to solve the case.  Mo and her best friend Dale create the Desperado Detectives agency, and set out to find the answers themselves.

Three Times Lucky is a lot of fun with enough mystery to keep you guessing while you giggle.  It’s suggested for ages 10 and up.

Happy reading!

Are you looking for another dystopian young adult novel to fill the Hunger Games void?  Divergent might just do it. This New York Times Bestseller takes place in a future where five different factions have split off, each one taking care of a different aspect of society.

 The Erudite are the knowledge seekers.  The Amity keep the peace and do the farming and the arts.  Those from Candor believe in complete honesty at all times, while those from Abnegation strive to be completely selfless, always helping others.  The Dauntless are tough and fearless, trained to be the soldiers who will defend the society.

When children reach the age of sixteen they are tested to see if their personality fits the faction they were  born into, or if they are better suited for another faction.  But no matter what the tests show, the choice is theirs.

Beatrice was born into Abnegation, but has never felt she fit in.  Her selfless brother, Caleb, is the image of Abnegation. He never considers his own needs, and often gives Beatrice disapproving looks when she
forgets to offer help to others or asks too many questions.

When Beatrice takes her faction test, it turns out to be a few simulated scenes that feel completely real.  they’re designed to test her response to danger, the needs of others, etc.  Will she be honest?  Brave?   Selfless?

Her results are “inconclusive” the woman says initially, but then furtively tells Beatrice she’s tested as Divergent and she must never let anyone find out. It is dangerous to be Divergent, and the woman protects her secret by deleting her results from the computer record.

Beatrice chooses Dauntless, the brave and fearless ones.  Caleb, sweet selfless Caleb, goes for Erudite, the truth seekers.  Their father is devastated at their betrayal, but surprisingly Beatrice’s mother smiles as her daughter is lead off to her new life.

This new life, it turns out, is more than jumping on and off of moving trains. Beatrice becomes Tris, sheds her shy private nature and tries not to end up at the bottom of the Dauntless class. The bottom few trainees will
be cast out and become factionless, a fate worse than death.

The training is brutal, and not all students survive.  To make matters worse, the Divergent label haunts Tris, showing up in other training simulations.  
 
And something else is afoot.  Something bad.

Divergent is the first in a series recommended for ages 13 and up.  It offers up a mixture of action, difficult decisions, and romance similar to what the Hunger Games series used to capture so many imaginations.

Divergent is suggested for ages 13 and up.

Happy reading!

When Emma gets her first computer in 1996, the internet is newish and Facebook hasn’t even been invented.  But somehow she and her neighbor/best friend, Josh, find Facebook posts entered by their adult selves fifteen years in the future.

It’s exciting for Josh to see his future self married to the hottest girl in school, a girl who has always seemed way outside his league.  On the other hand, Emma’s hand, it can be pretty depressing to see your future husband cheating on you after you’ve just lost your job.

The good news for Emma is that little tweaks to the present can drastically alter the future.  The bad news is nothing seems to help.  The future just becomes a different kind of miserable.

The Future of Us, told in alternating viewpoints with Carolyn Mackler writing Emma and Jay Asher writing Josh, is an interesting twist on time travel.  Usually the protagonist hates his life, and goes back into the past to change it.  In this novel, Josh and Emma catch glimpses of a future that doesn’t yet exist, and try to mold it to their liking.

The Future of Us is recommended for ages 12 and up, and is basically a sweet high school romance with a sprinkling of science fiction.

 Happy reading!

Code Name Verity is the story of two young British heroines during World War II.  Maddie is a pilot at a time when women mostly weren’t allowed to fly planes, and Queenie is a wireless radio operator, among other things.

Author Elizabeth Wein has put so many twists and deceptions into this fascinating tale that it’s hard for me to review it without giving anything away. At the end of the book there are “Ah Ha!” moments that compelled me to go back and review some events with newfound understanding.

The book opens with the wireless operator pouring out her story on scraps of paper provided by her Nazi captors.  She has agreed to write it all down in exchange for less torturous treatment, not anything cushy and comfortable, mind you, just a little less cruel.  Wein doesn’t dwell on the torture but she doesn’t avoid it either.  It’s a necessary part of the book, but is not described in so much detail as to greatly torment the reader.

Queenie writes of her shame for giving away secret radio codes, and also comments about her current imprisonment, but mostly she writes of the events leading up to her plane crash in Nazi-occupied France with Maddie at the controls.  Where is Maddie?  Missing and presumed dead.

About half way through the book, Queenie gets to the end of her tale and Maddie’s part of the story is told.  And here I must stop, and you must read for yourself to find out what really happened.

This WWII historical novel is also a story of best friends from very different worlds.  Their paths might never have crossed if not for the war, but once they become friends there is no parting them.

Code Name Verity is suggested for ages 14 and up… way up.  There is enough history and intrigue in there to keep adults entertained, and if you like airplanes there are plenty of those, too.

Happy reading!

Seraphina has a gift for music, but her father won’t let her use it.  She was twelve years old when she found out why.  Her musical abilities come from her mother, who was a dragon, unbeknownst to everyone including her father. 

Dragons abound in the world author Rachel Hartman has created.  They take human form, acting as ambassadors, teachers, and in many other functions.  But it is illegal for humans and dragons to marry.  Seraphina’s father is a lawyer, a great keeper of the law.  How this could have happened is unthinkable, and no one must ever find out.
  
At sixteen, against her father’s wishes, Seraphina accepts a position as assistant to the royal court musician.  She is now in the spotlight and must take great pains to conceal the scales on her arms and around her waist, not to mention the visions she falls into unexpectedly.

 Raised primarily by her dragon uncle, Orma (in his human form), she has a good understanding of both the
 dragon and the human world.  She struggles to help Prince Lucian preserve the 40-year peace between dragons and humans, while keeping her dangerous secret.

Even for a fantasy novel where there is a tremendous amount of world building to be done at the beginning, Seraphina a bit slow to start.  But it’s worth it.  Seraphina is a compelling character, and her uncle Orma is even more intriguing as he struggles to protect his niece in a political climate where showing concern for humans is not permitted.

Seraphina is fantasy, adventure, political intrigue, and a bit of romance rolled into one.  At 480 pages it's a longer read than most for ages 12 and up, but I for one can’t wait for the sequel that's promised!

Happy reading!

Last month’s book, Seven Tears Into the Sea by Terri Farley, was a modern-day paranormal Selkie romance. Selke Girl by Laurie Brooks, is also about those seal/human shape-shifters of Celtic mythology, but it has more the ancient feel of myth and legend. 
 
Selkie Girl is set in a fishing village on the Orkney Island of Shapinsay in the North Sea.  Elin Jean is the sixteen-year-old daughter a fisherman.  The villagers believe too many seals (or selkies, as they call them) are eating all the fish, so each year there is a bloody culling of the newborn seal pups.  
 
Elin Jean does her best to lobby for the seals, and tries to keep them safe as best she can.  That protective instinct, and her fondness for swimming far out to sea while others dare not even wade, seems to have earned her the title Selkie Girl.  But there’s something more. 
 
Elin Jean has been kept apart from the other children her whole life.  She’d thought it was all her father’s doing until she sneaks out one day and meets the other children on their way to school.  Without pause, they shun her for her strange webbed hands, throw stones, and taunt her with, “Selkie Girl!  Selkie Girl!” as if that were a bad thing.

Only Tam, the Gypsy boy (and something of an outcast himself), shows her any kindness, but she doesn’t know how to accept it.  She has no trust of kindness.
 
The book follows Selkie legend when Elin discovers a sealskin stuffed in a hole over a door.  It’s the skin Elin’s father stole from her Selkie mother sixteen years ago, and has kept hidden ever since, forcing the woman to live on land in human form.

Elin must choose whether to give the skin back to her mother and set her free, or put it back in its secret
hiding place.  She loves her mother and wants her to be free, but cannot bear the thought of living without
her.

More choices are in store for Elin when she discovers that she is half selkie.  Will she stay on land, nurture the
affection she and Tam have for each other, and protect the seal pups?  Or will she dive into the sea and try
to make a life among the Selkies?

Selkie Girl is recommended for grades 6-9, and those who might enjoy a poetic fish story.

Happy reading!

Seven Tears Into the Sea is a fantasy romance by Terri Farley, the author of a  series of popular horse books.  In this book, however, she delves into seals and the selkie myth.

 At 17, Gwen returns to the Northern California coastal town where she lived until she was ten.  Her grandmother still runs a quaintly Celtic bed and breakfast there, and has broken her leg and needs extra help for the summer, so Gwennie steps in.

The problem is Gwen is still haunted by a sleepwalking event that left her out on the beach not long before her family moved away.  It’s a small community and everybody knows that Gwen had to be rescued dressed only
in her nightgown in the middle of a dark stormy night. 
 
It’s surely still the talk of the village how Gwen almost drowned, and that she never explained how she came
to be there in the first place, let alone with a naked, dark-eyed stranger. She doesn’t want to face those people who used to be her friends and neighbors.  Perhaps she can hide out at the inn, working every waking hour.

The way Gwen remembers it, she saw a man walking out into the roaring surf and knew he would surely die.  She walked in after him, calling for him to come back, but then she herself was taken down by a wave.  The next thing she remembers the stranger was bending over her on the beach, having surely pulled her from the sea and saved her life.

The first chapter lured me in with its lyrical language, very much like a fantasy.  I was a little disappointed that the rest of the story was told in a more contemporary, modern-day voice, but that’s what makes this book fit into the genre of magical realism.  It’s a sort of “this could happen to you if you’d only believe” fantasy genre that can be a lot of fun.  
 
Of course, Gwen meets her mysterious stranger again.  Between him, her psychic grandmother, the townspeople, and a couple of rowdy friends from the city, life gets interesting, but that’s not for me to tell.  Take a read if you’re interested.

Seven Tears Into the Sea is suggested for ages 12 and up.

Happy reading!

Mia thinks everybody sees the world the same way she does, until one day in third grade when she’s struggling with a math problem at the board in front of the class. 
She begins to rewrite the problem in colored chalk, a different color for each digit in the numbers.  The  teacher asks what she’s doing, and she replies that it might be easier if each digit was in its appropriate color.  The whole class laughs.

For Mia every letter and every number comes in a different color, always the same color for each one no matter whether she sees it in a magazine, book or billboard.  Sounds have colors, too.  The meows, purrs and wheezes of her cat come in various shades of yellow-orange, like mangos in different seasons.  That’s why she named him Mango, not because of his yellow eyes like everyone thinks.

Mia is thirteen when she realizes this oddity of hers has a name.  Synesthesia.  She’s a synesthete, and there are others like her.  Well, not just like her.  Every synesthete’s ability is different.  Even those who see numbers and letters in color, which is the most common form of synesthesia, have their own unique
color coding systems. 

There are other kinds of synesthetes, too.  Some taste sounds or hear colors. Some attribute personalities to months of the year, like maybe January is angry and June is jovial.  For some synesthetes, different musical
notes cause different colors to appear, which makes it really easy to sing on pitch, or sing a rainbow.

Synesthesia, a sort of cross wiring of the senses, is an actual difference in some people’s brains.  Here’s a website about it that I got from a real synsethete’s review of A Mango-Shaped Space on Amazon.com --   http://www.visualinformation.info/understanding-the-phenomenon-of-synesthesia-infographic/
 
I found the whole synesthesia aspect of A Mango-Shaped Space fascinating, but there is more to this novel than a quirky neurological phenomenon.  The bigger story is about how Mia faces the loss of her grandfather, struggles to keep her best friend Jenna while hiding what she thinks of as her weirdness, and struggles to take care of her ailing cat.

A Mango Shaped-Space is suggested for grades five and up, but I notice a lot of adults reviewing it on Amazon.  A fascinating story is good for all.

 Happy reading!