3 girls, 3 makeshift families...3 more books

Last time, I talked about three "boy books" (I will reiterate, though, that I think Buddy will be a hit with dog-lovers of either gender); this time, we're looking at three "girl books", books that aren't just about three girls, but about three girls who find themselves without parents, facing the reality of some kind of foster care. Without further ado...

First up is Summer of the Wolves by Polly Carlson-Voiles. Briefly, Nika and her little brother Randall have been in a few foster homes following their mother's death (dad had been dead for a while); their latest is a good one, but their foster mother gets sick and needs to give up fostering for a while. Coincidentally, a long-lost uncle is discovered and agrees to host the kids for a few weeks in Minnesota. Uncle Ian studies wolves in the Boundary Waters and, the first day he takes Nika out with him, they find an orphaned wolf pup who they take home to raise. As the wolf, Khan, grows older, Nika grows more attached to this new home, at least until the inevitable misunderstanding and falling-out. Actually, I expected this book to be a lot more predictable; few of the beats fell where I expected them. Nika's relationships develop very naturally, which is to say, a lot of false starts and brief spats and very little reliance on the cliche of the steady build, big falling-out, and inevitable epiphany and reunion. There are some exciting scenes, but mostly it's a quiet, warm kind of book. Interestingly, this "girl book", like the two below, seem more gender neutral than the preceding "boy books"; that dynamic seems a bit backwards. The assumption seems to be that girls will read books about boys, but the reverse can't be true. But we'll see.

Next up, Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan (another thing these books share - authors with three names!). This was the only book on the list I had already read, but I read it again. It also has the advantage going in of being a book that tons of kids have already read, although that didn't push The False Prince to a win, so it might not be as big an advantage as I'd have thought last year. I like a lot about this book, although I think the character of Dell Duke is a misstep - yet another incompetent, slobbish fatty. You can make a character fat and allow them to be happy. And not just happy, but smart and capable and successful! I swear! Anyway. 

I just went and read The Book Smugglers' review of this book and found myself nodding along with their objections as well: Dell's bonkers counseling "strategies" that are portrayed as relatively harmless quirks, the fact that Pattie is sitting on a ton of money that she won't spend on her own kids (there's frugal living and then there's living illegally in a garage) but busts out for the very special (and don't you forget it) Willow, etc., etc.

But still, I enjoyed it! I like that Willow learns to be more of risk-taker and to embrace uncertainty. I like the diversity of the characters. I like the stuff about plants. It made me start thinking about places that could use a nice garden. I will recommend it to kids, although I suspect most of them won't need me to because they've already heard from teachers and friends that this is a book they should be reading.

Finally, One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt, which I finished last night. I did not mean to read to the end when I sat down with this book - I was only a couple chapters in, but I just couldn't find a good place to set it down and, before I knew it, the end was only a few chapters away and, well, here we are. It's weird and kind of great that there are so many books about foster care out there and on this list. And they're all pretty good! 

I don't have quite enough distance from this to have thought of anything insightful to say, but I think it'll be a hit. Carley is a great character, very hard not to root for. 

3 more...

As much as I hate the idea of "girl books" and "boy books," the three Maud Hart Lovelace contenders I'm going to talk about here are definitely boy books. I don't think any of them pass the Bechdel test (neither did Fourmile or Zombie Baseball Beatdown, now that I think about it), which isn't the end of things, but worth noting, especially since those two and the following three are all pretty clearly on the list to appeal to boys.

Anyway.

First up is Chris Rylander's The Fourth Stall. It's a Godfather spoof set in a middle school, although I haven't seen The Godfather all the way through (or read the Mario Puzo book), so I'm certainly not going to attempt to point out the parallels (I do think I would have figured out who the rat was way too easily, but I don't think there are tons of middle school students who are going into this book with deep Godfather knowledge either).

Honestly, I wasn't crazy about The Fourth Stall. It's a perfectly fine mystery, but a few things really bugged me. I thought Mac, the main character, was kind of a bully, and not developed well enough to be a true antihero. And then the gender thing. I mean, this is a book set in a middle school. I get that it's supposed to be noir-ish, but discounting a couple of mothers, the only girls that Mac and company interact with are some unnamed mean girls, two female bullies (who are almost immediately written out), and the femme fatale who walks into Mac's office on the last page to set up a sequel. BOOOOOO. Rylander really missed an opportunity with the bullies - he brought three of the ten (I think) major school bullies into Mac's crew for a little while and really should have made one of them one of the girls.

Next up is Fred Bowen's Perfect Game. Speaking of main characters that are hard to root for, here we have Isaac, who spends a little too much time in this book being a self-centered ass. But thank goodness he has some kids with mental and physical disabilities to teach him how to be nicer!

I'm simplifying a bit, but only a bit. This is a very formulaic book - if you've ever read a sports book or seen a sports movie (especially those directed at kids), you know how this is going to end from about the fifth page (and you really only need that much time to find out the specific thing that Isaac wants to achieve, which in this case is a spot on the roster of a city all-star-ish baseball team, which of course he gets). Perfect Game is this year's Ghost Dog Secrets, the kind of book that the author can churn out in their sleep. Kids will read it and enjoy it, but there's nothing particularly special about it and it isn't going to win (it's worth noting, however, that I did not hate Perfect Game; I kind of hated Ghost Dog Secrets).

Last up this time is M. H. Herlong's Buddy. This one could be a contender. It's about a boy, his three-legged dog, and Hurricane Katrina. Lil' T is a character you actually want to root for; he's far from perfect (in fact, he's pretty awful for a long while after Katrina), but you can understand where he's coming from and his growth is really nice and really well-done by the author. Of all the "boy books" on the list, this one should have the widest appeal, especially among dog lovers. And while most middle schoolers aren't going to remember Katrina, they do know it happened during their lifetime, and that should get them interested. Also, diversity! Seriously, this list is a big improvement on last year's list, diversity-wise, with a third of the books having main characters who are people of color.