The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon

Subhi was born in an Australian detention centre and knows nothing but fences and guards and hunger.

 

A refugee, Subhi lives with his sister Queenie and their mother, who grows more and more despondent as the days go on.

Subhi finds refuge in his friend Eli, who runs a smuggling operation under the guards' noses. He also likes Harvey, the only guard, or "Jacket" as they are called, that treats the people in the detention centre anything close to human.

Subhi's only hope is that his father will someday return.
One night, his life changes when he's visited from someone on the other side of the fence. Her name is Jimmie and she asks Subhi to read her stories, stories that were written by her mother who has since passed away.

Jimmie's father works double shifts, her older brother Jonah is tasked with taking care of her but he's a teenager and isn't ready to be a parent.

The Bombs That Brought Us Together by Brian Conaghan

Current events made this book a more timely read for me and even though this novel doesn't delve deeply into the after effects of large scale weapons, there is still enough detail to enable the reader to empathize with the characters and understand the reasoning behind some of the decisions they make.

The overall theme of the book is one of despair, hopelessness and feeling powerless in the face of big government apparatus. The main character is a 14 year old called Charlie Law whose mom is sick and badly needs medicine. All goods are in short supply including medicine so after a chance encounter with a shadowy figure Charlie gains access to a never-ending supply of medicine, no questions asked. This seems fortuitous but perhaps this may not be the case.

 The restrictions are in place because Charlie lives in a place called Little Town which is under siege from nearby Old Country. The Old Country regime is harsh and soldiers from their country patrol the Little Town streets and sometimes harass Little Townites. In order to survive Charlie's parents has painstakingly taught him a series of rules that are essential for him to survive. His world is altered even further when one day he meets a fellow teen from Old Country whose family has had to flee their home. Will Charlie be able to get along with Pav?  Will his government be able to overthrow their oppressors?

Some read alikes to this work are The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne, The Old Country by Mordecai Gerstein and Eye of the Wolf by Daniel Pennac. Conflict in Conaghan's novels echoes many real life conflicts past and present and I can see this book being used in high school classrooms to broach many difficult subjects.

The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education

"It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry... It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty." Albert Einstein


Grace Llewellyn's The Teenage Liberation Handbook is among the very best books for potential homeschoolers (or unschoolers), along with John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us Down.

Maybe you believe you aren't ready for freedom?

On some level, no one ever is; it's not a matter of age. People of all ages make mistakes with their freedom -- becoming involved with destructive friends, choosing college majors they're not deeply interested in, buying houses with rotten foundations, clearcutting forests, breaking good marriages for dumb reasons... Sure, teenagers make mistakes. So do adults, and it seems to me adults have a harder time admitting and fixing theirs... The only alternative to making mistakes is for someone to make all your decisions for you, in which case you will make their mistakes instead of your own. Obviously, that's not a life of integrity. Might as well start living, rather than merely obeying, before the age of eighteen...

Schools play a nasty trick on all of us. They make "learning" so unpleasant and frightening that they scare many people away from countless pleasures: evenings browsing in libraries, taking an edible plants walk at the nature center, maybe even working trigonometry problems for the hard beauty and challenge of it... By calling school "learning," schools make learning sound like an excruciatingly boring way to waste a nice afternoon. That's low.


It is written for the teen more than for the parent, but parents would do well to read it, too:

Homeschooling parents of teenagers are rarely teachers, in the school sense of the word, and this book never suggests that you forsake your own career or interests in order to learn calculus (etc.) fast enough to "teach" it. Healthy kids can teach themselves what they need to know, through books, various people, thinking, and other means (A freshly unschooled person may at first be a lousy learner; like cigarettes, school-style passivity may be a slow habit to kick)...

If you have helped with or supervised your children's homework, or stayed in close touch with their teachers, homeschooling need not drain your energy any more than that.

Nineteenth-century "educational" methods do not work very well. We do better when we are free to learn what we want, when we want. The Teenage Liberation Handbook rocks.

SPILL ZONE by Scott Westerfeld

Big thanks to First Second for the review copy of Scott Westerfeld's first graphic novel. The graphic novel was just released last week, but prior to that, it was serialized online at The Spill Zone. If you're a fan of Westerfeld's work (and seriously, if you aren't, it's likely because you haven't read him yet), this will be right up your alley.

It features:

A female lead with a motorcycle and a camera
An environmental disaster
An exploration of what we do with abandoned or ruined spaces
An exploration of family relationships (Addison, the lead, has custody of her younger sister, rendered mute by the disaster)

Here is part of what Westerfeld said about how this graphic novel came to be:

In 2004, a Ukrainian photojournalist named Elena Filatova (aka KiddofSpeed) blogged an account of her illicit motorcycle journeys through the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the area blighted by history’s worst nuclear accident. Her photos and writing were elegiac and apocalyptic, evoking the otherworldliness of the forsaken city of Pripyat. But once the posts went viral, certain discrepancies were noted, and Filatova admitted that her accounts were “more poetry than reality.”

In short, she might have taken a tour bus. You see, it’s pretty easy to get into the Exclusion Zone these days.

But the poetic version stuck with me—a woman on a motorcycle, a camera, an empty and dangerous world.

I’ve always been a sucker for tales about exploring broken, abandoned terrain. As a kid I was an “urban explorer,” though we didn’t have that term back then. I spelunked the buildings at my upstate New York college, and I’ve explored abandoned sites in and around NYC since. There’s nothing quite like the silent loneliness of a place that has been abandoned, restricted, and left to ruin. In these spaces, the usual rules don’t apply. It feels as if the laws of physics don’t either.

So what if they really were a slice of another world?

That’s what Spill Zone is about. The ways that disasters, canny or uncanny, change the spaces that they take place in. And the ways that we survivors become explorers of those ruined spaces, picking them apart with memories, stories, and art.

Atlas Obscura by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton

Looking for information about Grand Canyon National Park? The Smithsonian Museums? Perhaps the Great Wall of China, or maybe the Eiffel Tower? Then Atlas Obscura is not the travel guide for you. Looking for information on where to go to partake in local delicacies such as eggs boiled in the urine of young boys? Interested in the distinction between the largest ball of twine collected by one person and the largest ball collected by more than one person?

Then you’ve come to exactly the right book.

Written by three writers/editors of the Atlas Obscura website (Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton), Atlas Obscura the book is a massive compendium of weird, remote, and always interesting geographical spots and historical remembrances. If you enjoy the website, you will certainly enjoy this “Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders.” This is not a book for tourists, and this is not a book for the meek. This is a book for the emboldened, for those who want to see the world’s hidden places.

Structured as a geographical tour through the continents, Atlas Obscura is filled with examples of natural wonders: caves, lakes, deserts, and the like. But more interesting to me, likely because they are also more unknown to me, are the human-made wonders. Throughout the book's survey of the various continents are examples of what one person can accomplish through sheer will. Castles, pyramids, shrines—all built by individuals on their own over a lifetime. And of course there are also the oddities: the ice cream parlor in Venezuela that serves over 900 flavors, including Ham + Cheese and Sardines and Brandy; devices used to give tobacco smoke enemas in the 18th and 19th centuries; books bound in the skin of their authors; the "body farm" in Tennessee, where scientists study decomposition; an anechoic chamber in Minneapolis, where the absence of sound freaks out visitors; the one-mile square desert near the Arctic Circle ringed by snow-topped mountains.

Saturday was Obscura Day 2017 on atlasobscura.com, and this book will make you want to take part in the next one. We often forget the vast weirdness of the world, as well as the isolation that still exists in some places. And though the increasing "stripmallification" of travel pushes people to the same spots, pushes people toward comfort rather than curiosity, Atlas Obscura makes childhood wonder return to jaded adult minds.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

Hold on tight, I'm about to recommend a vampire novel. (I am just as shocked by this as you are.) In my defense, this is a decidedly complex and bloodthirsty vampire novel in which there is only a bit of romance and no one sparkles and and no one falls in love with someone who might remotely be considered "the girl who must save the world." In a word, Holly Black's Coldest Girl in Coldtown is fabulous and it simply must be read to be believed.

In Black's America, the vampire infection has been identified and those who become ill are quarantined, along with full-blown vampires in "coldtowns." When initially bitten but before feeding, victims become physically cold thus confirming their infection. Teenager Tana finds herself in the middle of a vampire mess when waking up after a party that apparently took a horrifying turn while she was passed out. Facing certain death along with an old boyfriend and a mysterious but helpful stranger, she gets them out alive and finds herself on the kind of road trip that Kerouac needed a lot more drugs to dream up. Their destination is Coldtown in the former Springfield, Massachusetts. Along the way, Tana must tease out the stranger's story, keep her friend from losing his humanity, freak out over her own potential vampire-ness and deal with two of the most clueless teenage hitchhiker-bloggers in the history of the world. Winning means getting herself locked behind the gates where the most fabulous vampire party in the country runs live every night on the Internet. If only the whole thing wasn't so terrifying, it might just be fun.

But -- and here is where Black truly shines -- every little bit of Coldest Girl in Coldtown is exceedingly terrifying. Between moments of sarcastic wit, readers discover Tana's desperate backstory, the equally troubling motivations of her companions and the desperate lives of those who dwell in Coldtown. Everyone has his or her own twisted story in this walled city and survival at its ugliest is the only thing that matters. Black strips all the glittery appeal from vampire life while making vamps themselves far more human then we have become accustomed to. Assholes in life are assholes in death and Coldtown is full of a lot of hungry, angry, confused, lost, royally screwed-up assholes. What readers won't expect is the craven nature of the humans who end up there as well and how the most base aspects of their natures are revealed to Tana as she tries to stay sane, stay alive, and dodge that damn infection.

Every character in Coldest Girl in Coldtown is rich and complicated. This is a complex world the author has created and she relies on everyone within it to keep the narrative the irresistible adventure it is. I thought the vampire novel was dead, or at least on life support, but Black has done nothing short of a miracle here; she has made me care about fangs again. Darkly romantic in the manner of the oldest tales, mysterious and bloody and banked with shocking twists and turns, Coldest Girl in Coldtown is all of October's promise come to life. Somewhere, Anne Rice is chuckling with glee as finally the real vampire is back.

This review was previously published in my YA column at Bookslut.com

Hounded by Kevin Hearne

Hounded is the first in the Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne. I loved all 9 books and a few novellas as well in this series.
Atticus O'Sullivan owns a small shop in Tempe Arizona selling books and herbs to the locals. He looks like a 21 yea-old Arizona State University student, but really he is a 2100 year-old Druid hiding out from his arch enemy Aenghus Og, a member of the Tuatha De Danann or the Celtic God pantheon. Hiding out in Arizona works pretty well mostly because there aren't many Gods from any of the world's pantheon's (all of which exist) around, which is pretty handy.

Atticus is magically bound to his trusty Irish wolfhound Oberon so they can speak to each other in their minds. I find this to be particularly entertaining. Oberon is an amazing companion, able to help Atticus when he is in a tight spot or to provide some comic relief in otherwise tense situations. Thanks to Immortali-Tea, Atticus and Oberon enjoy life staying the same age for as long as they wish while fending off attacks from whatever minions Aenghus sends against them. It helps when you get to wield Fragarach, a magical sword that can cut through any armor.

I personally think of this series as Percy Jackson for older teens and adults. It has it all, all the Gods from the Celts, the Norse, Hindus, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Allah, Coyote, Christ and the Virgin Mary to the members of the magical world including the Fae, vampires, werewolves, witches, goblins, sprites, dryads, and the Minotaur. It's all real - though Atticus makes sure to point out that no one thinks Thor is cool like he is in the Marvel movies, not even close!

Rebels by Brian Wood

Let's talk about the American Revolution, shall we?

At some point in elementary school, every American learns all about Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty and the Boston Tea Party and the Boston Massacre and the Minutemen and George Washington and Valley Forge and Betsy Ross (who did not exist) and Bunker Hill (which was really a battle fought on Breed's Hill) and the Crossing of the Potomac and, well, I could go on and on and on.

(If you are of a certain age you learned a lot of this by watching the movie Johnny Tremain which I think I saw a million times, or at least it felt like I did.)

Brian Wood wanted to explore the notion of just what being a patriot meant during the revolutionary war period. But he didn't want to go with the big names like Washington and Franklin, he wanted to know what it was for like the men and women on the ground. So, Wood created a limited comic book series which is now collected in a trade called Rebels, and it is incredible.

Seriously - best thing I've ever read on the American Revolution.

In the opening series Wood tells the story of "A Well-Regulated Militia" which focuses on the hard choices of one young farmer who starts out defending his New Hampshire home against the British and then joins the larger effort under Washington. Ethan Allen plays a big part here and the Green Mountain Boys (who you may not have learned about). The story is about how not obvious (or easy) it was for the men who chose to leave their homes. We always think of America as one nation — we might be regionally focused but we are one country. Back in the 1770s that was not the case at all so fighting for another colony was a very big deal. Wood brings that choice to life in the this series in a way that I have not seen elsewhere.

There are also stories about Native Americans and how their wars against each other found them fighting on the opposing sides of the French and British during the French & Indian War (the lead-up to the Revolution), there is a story about a fearless young radical in Boston, about a very unfortunate British soldier (conscripted, confused and stuck) and a very (really far too short) piece about a former slave who sides with the British against the Americans in exchange for freedom.

My favorite story though is the one that rips apart the Molly Pitcher myth: "Goodwife, Follower, Patriot, Republican". This story about a camp follower, who assists her husband and then, in the heat of battle, takes his place when he falls to keep the cannons firing, seems like a dramatization of the Molly Pitcher legend. But then it takes a dramatic turn when she pursues a pension years after the war. The way this woman — this hero of the revolution — is treated by a bunch of smug men is positively infuriating. It sheds significant light on the work women did in combat even before this nation was a nation however, and is a comic that everyone should read.

I love Rebels. This is exactly the kind of writing that we need more of to get people excited about learning American history. All of the art is outstanding: realistic, intense and often very poignant. Rebels shows what comics can do with a subject that seemed to be fresh out of new ideas. Thanks, Brian Wood—this book is outstanding.

The Raqqa Diaries: Escape From "Islamic State"

The news about Syria, especially since the US recently sent a bunch of bombs in its direction, can be overwhelming but it's important, really important and as Americans and humans and citizens of this world, we need to be doing what we can to educate ourselves on the Syrian Civil War. A good place to start, especially if you are intimidated by reading about foreign affairs, is The Raqqa Diaries: Escape From "Islamic State" by Samer. 

First - Samer is a pseudonym, to protect the author who was forced to leave his country after being targeted by the Islamic State (referred to in the book as "Daesh" - as it is known in much of the Middle East). He is 24 years old, a former college student and a member of the resistance who took to the streets against the authoritarian control of President Bashar al-Asaad and then also became targeted by Daesh after they took control of his city.

Framed as a series of diary entries and illustrated by Scott Coello, The Raqqa Diaries takes readers through the chaos of Samer's life as he reels from the heady days of demanding governmental reforms in the streets to the invasion by Daesh, air strikes by Russian jets and the subsequent involvement of multiple other groups in the war, all with agendas of their own.

Here's the first thing you learn while reading this book: Syria is complicated and anyone who suggests it isn't is a liar. In some ways, Samer's story is very straightforward. He writes about people being dragged away by al-Asaad and tortured, including his own father, for speaking about about government corruption. He writes about his friends who are targeted by Daesh for speaking out against their corruption and getting publicly murdered in executions that everyone is required to attend. He writes about getting arrested himself. He writes about getting tortured. He writes about his father being killed in an airstrike. He writes about longing for college and work and the girl he loved, who was forced to marry a Daesh fighter in order to save her own brother's life.

He writes, in just over 100 pages, about the end of his world. And then he writes about saying goodbye to his family and running for his life. The very least we can do is read his story. Really - the very very least we can do.

Here is Samer on the fight to get his father out of one of al-Asaad's prison before the war started:

No one should ever criticise a government official for stealing from his country, he said. After all, he continued, such a person might need to use public money to build a palace for himself to 'make the country look more civilised.' Or maybe he would go on to be really successful in business and become one of the country's top businessmen and wealth creators. And that was why officials should be allowed to do what they wanted.

Let's keep that in mind, shall we?

Later, he writes about the Hama massacre:

The Hama massacre of 1982 taught our people a valuable lesson. Under the command of the country's president, Hafez al-Assad [current president's father], the regime ended up killing more than 35,000 civilians in the heart of Syria, yet there were no repercussions. No journalists covered the atrocities, so people didn't know they had happened. 

We remember this. That's why we make sure that anything that happens in this war is documented and published outline through social media outlets.

Pay attention to Syria; people are literally risking their lives for our attention. And check out The Raqqa Diaries; it's a fast, compelling, unforgettable read and well worth your time.

The Accelerati Trilogy Book One - Tesla's Attic by Neal Shusterman and Eric Elman

As the literary site Bookslut is no longer active, I'm going to cross post some of my older reviews from my YA column there so readers can rediscover some of these books. I last reviewed for Bookslut in 2014. 

Tesla's Attic by Neal Shusterman and Eric Elman is billed as a middle-grade title, but I think it actually works best for teens. The only thing it is missing from standard YA fare is romance and frankly, sometimes teen readers don't want romance in their mystery-adventures. For those interested in what strange things could be lurking in an inherited house and how they tie into a potential "Men In Black" conspiracy, then, Tesla's Attic fits the bill. Make the heroes a smart and fearless group of Super 8 level teens who are not superpowered, not magical and not on the cusp of finding some mystical object that will make them superpowered or magical, and you have a great start to what is billed as the Accelerati Trilogy.

Fourteen-year-old Nick, his younger brother and father have moved into his great aunt's house large rambling Victorian house, which was left to them in her will. Still reeling from the recent death of his mother in a fire, Nick is struggling to hold his family together as they make their way in a new town, new school, and new family reality. Cleaning out the attic for a garage sale seems like a good idea, as Aunt Greta was knee-deep in a lot of who looks like junk. Unfortunately there are some bizarre side effects to the seemingly innocuous toasters, vacuums, tape recorders, and other items that make their way into the community at the surprisingly successful sale. After some strange occurrences at home, Nick realizes he has to get all the stuff back and enlists the help of some classmates who have been freaked out by their purchases. In the meantime, the group tries to figure out just how these things got to be so powerful and who might have built them.

Tesla fans will already know that there are plenty of connections between the inventor and Colorado, so the idea that he might have stashed a few things in an old friend's house for safekeeping is not beyond the realm of possibility. Just what the inventor was up to with all this stuff is another thing however, and when a group of deadly physicists appears who really wants the stuff, (and is willing to do whatever it takes to get it), then the stakes increase exponentially. It's one thing to save a neighbor from a wild toaster but quite another to face down folks who are as likely to kill you as negotiate. Nick has to get a grip on what he has unwittingly loosed on the town and also be mindful of his family, who don't know what's going on and are facing their own demons as well.

The chemistry between Nick and his friends, Mitch, Caitlin, and Vincent, is really fantastic. They are a complicated group, not all necessarily likable, and hiding their own secrets as most of us do. They come together first because of circumstance -- each has one of the attic objects -- but slowly, as they work on solving the mystery, they become friends. It's a lot of fun to see them form a team and the way Shusterman and Elfman have written them, as teenage "everymen," readers will easily be able to project themselves into the story. Tesla's Attic was a very fun read for me, one of the more engaging and surprising titles for teens I've come across in a while.

Edison's Alley and Hawking's Hallway round out the trilogy!