review: Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt

pub date: April 5, 2011
publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
pages: 368
format: audio
appeals: historical fiction, realistic fiction, family, art
content: clean

thoughts:
Schmidt has a gift of writing real, fully developed characters, including those on the edges of the story.

In the beginning of the novel, there are some really jerky people in Doug's life. His brother and the gym coach at his new school being two examples. Yet Schmidt has a way of showing why a character is the way they are, and with that new insight, no matter how jerky they are, it's hard to hate them. Which is AMAZING storytelling. The only character that I never really understood, especially at the end, was Doug's father. I didn't feel forgiveness towards him. But all the rest...POW! What GREAT characterization.

He is also amazing at playing my heart strings. One chapter I was so happy because things were FINALLY going well with Doug. But by the next chapter, something would happen that made me cry, literally cry. Twice I had tears running down my cheeks, I was so involved with Doug and his story, I had to keep listening long after I arrived home (I listened to it in my car and the narrator was wonderful).

I was very happy in the way the book ended--very hopeful. There was a while there where I was wondering if that would be possible. But it was. Yay!

The organization of the novel was also AMAZING. I loved how Auduban's artwork tied in so well with the story and the lessons Doug learns throughout the year of the novel. And since I listened to the book, it was rather nice how well Schmidt described the bird paintings because I didn't have the book to seem the birds myself.

So, if you haven't figured out how I feel about this book, let me tell you right out. I LOVED it. LOVED it.

And I'm not lying.

summary:
Midwesterner Gary D. Schmidt won Newbery Honor awards for Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boys and The Wednesday Wars, two coming-of-age novels about unlikely friends finding a bond. Okay For Now, his latest novel, explores another seemingly improbable alliance, this one between new outsider in town Doug Swieteck and Lil Spicer, the savvy spitfire daughter of his deli owner boss. With her challenging assistance, Doug discovers new sides of himself. Along the way, he also readjusts his relationship with his abusive father, his school peers, and his older brother, a newly returned war victim of Vietnam.

review: Red Moon Rising by Peter Moore

pub date: February 8, 2011
publisher: Hyperion
pages: 336
source: publisher
appeals: werewolf, vampire, politics, racism, male protag, great book for boys,


me:
The world Moore created was very interesting. A world where wulves, vampires and humans coexist. Sort of. Moore changed our history to fit their history--the Nazis weren't after Jews, they were after wulves. The civil right activists were fighting for equality between species (is that the right word?) instead of race. Famous people in our world are famous in his world, their names changed slightly and they may or may not be human. So I thought all of that was really interesting.


I liked Danny. I respected him as a character and respected his choices. I can see boys really liking this book. There's vampires and werewolves and fighting and a bully, but without the romance. Well, there is romance, but it is not girly romance.

I felt like the book ended very abruptly. None of the big issues were resolved. Because of this I am assuming it's a series. It could end here, but there are so many more questions, and no easy answers. This isn't a fluffy book.


blurb:
Being only half-vamp in a high school like Carpathia Night makes you a whole loser. But Danny Gray manages to escape the worst of the specists at his school. Thanks to genetic treatments he had as an infant, most people assume Danny's other half is human. Which is a good thing.


Ever since the development of synthetic blood – SynHeme – vamps have become society’s elite, while wulves like his father work menial jobs and live in bad neighborhoods. Wulves are less than second class citizens; once a month they become inmates, forced to undergo their Change in dangerous government compounds.


For Danny, living with his vamp mother and going to a school with a nearly all-vamp student body, it’s best to pretend his wulf half doesn’t even exist. But lately Danny's been having some weird symptoms — fantastic night vision; a keener-than-usual sense of smell; and headaches, right around the full moon.


Even though it's easy to be in denial, it's hard to ignore evidence. There's only a month until the next few moon, and Danny's time is running out.


Peter Moore speaks to adolescents in a voice that will have them laughing, set in a world that will get them thinking.