things you read again.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Review written for ADD-afflicted folks: This is a Newbery Award winning YA novel about a twelve-year-old girl in New York City. It encompasses Madeleine L'Engle, sandwich shops, losing friends, being punched in the face, gaining friends, racism, the 20,000 dollar Pyramid, divorce, two-dollar bills and kind dentists, along with a lot of other stuff I just won't mention. It's touching, it's funny, it's 200 pages of perfect.

Wanna hear me blather more praise? Read on: When I was a kid, I told people that my greatest dream in life was to win a Newbery award. And then a Pulitzer. I wanted to win both, and if I could win both at once, all the better. For as long as I can remember, I associated the Newbery award with the best sorts of books. The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Maniac McGee, Holes, Walk Two Moons, The Giver, Dear Mr. Henshaw... these were the books that not only made me into a better reader, but gave me something real to think about, not just a place to escape to. And When You Reach Me is perfect company for these books. It's a book of simple pleasures shadowed with complexity - Stead set Miranda up in 1979, away from cell phones, the internet, video game systems and everything that comes with them. Instead, Miranda reads for fun. She hangs out with her friends and listens to records. And the puzzle that sets the twisty little narrative in motion is all the more exciting.

Plot: Miranda, 12, lives with her mother in New York City. She's a latchkey kid, but she hates the term. Her mom is a paralegal and has dated a lawyer in the firm, Richard, for years. Miranda has a best friend in the apartment below hers named Sal - but one day he gets punched in the face for no reason, and everything changes. Sal won't talk to her, her Mom is chosen as a contestant for the 20,000 dollar Pyramid with Dick Clark, and she starts finding mysterious messages, addressed to her, that scare her.

And, just a little bit more: When I finished this book on the J-Church line heading home, I missed my stop. By a lot. I didn't even notice after I had put the book in my lap because I was looking into that middle distance between the novel you just read and the real world - that sort of fuzzy in between where the curtain is finally being rushed across the stage and you realize that none of this actually happened. The puzzle that this book sets up is only half the joy in reading it - in fact, some readers will probably guess at it before the book is through. The other half is Miranda's relationships, of course, and the way that quiet, slow understanding of how friends are made and kept and how life can be now that she understands a small fraction more than she did than when the book started. That "lifting of the veil" (to cop a line from the novel) is between every line, after every chapter marker. And that's probably why this book won its award.

Should you read it? Yes. Go get it.

pretty mad.

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Review for those who have ADD: It's a book about a guy who gets mad cow disease and then has to save the world, either in his head or really, depending on what you believe. Actually this book might be written for those with ADD - it's a breakneck paced road trip novel chocked full of so many characters, places, and ideas, it's tough to ever be bored. I don't know if that means it's good, but it's certainly compulsively readable. 500 pages goes by super quick. But perhaps I should put that phrase in bold (I didn't because I didn't want your eyes to go directly there) I don't know if that means it's good.

still here? okay here we go: I make a point to read the Newbery and Printz award medalists every year, if not the honors books as well. Newbery will rarely steer (ha, get it?) you wrong, and Printz never has - Last year's Jellicoe Road remains on my list favorite books of 2009, and probably will go down as one of my favorite books ever. But Bovine is different territory. Cameron Smith is a pot smoking, talk-backing, lazy and generally incredibly unlikable character. The key to making this book readable and not just annoying is that you want him to succeed - and Ms. Bray does this by giving him a likable slacker attitude and then a terribly sad disease. It definitely works - you root for Cam and the characters he picks up along the way.

Plot: Like I said, Cameron is a go nowhere sort of character, who has no idea what's up next in life, or even if he cares. He's a bored, annoyed, teenage boy who sees himself above the fray... until he mysteriously gets mad cow disease and starts to lose his mind. After that, a beautiful punk rock fairy named Dulcie gives him a quest to save the world and find his cure. And he learns, of course, that he wants to live, as well as finding friends in a dwarf and a lawn gnome who turns out to be a Norse God.

More: That's the sort of thing this book throws in and makes work. It's pretty glorious when it does, too. What is hit and miss are the satires on pop culture... for some reason, Ms. Bray felt the need to change everything she thought to mention, except Disneyland. Star Wars is Star Fighters, MTV is YA!TV, And an indie band like... maybe the Magnetic Fields? Or Sigur Ros? is replaced with a group called The Great Tremolo. And then again, like I said, Disneyland remains Disneyland. In a book that deals with string theory and parallel dimensions, I was willing to buy it, but I didn't really understand the need. It was distracting. I suppose I can put this all in the pocket of "in a world almost exactly like our own, EXCEPT," but I don't think that's what Going Bovine is going for.

Should you read it?: Yeah, I think so. The novel was actually a rollicking good time, and the message was on point for so many people in the world - stop existing, start living. The three or four Printz books that I have read so far seems to all have that in common, and it's a message I never tire of. Plus, the Norse Mythology and Gonzo's characterizations are treats enough in their own right.