Ava and Taco Cat by Carol Weston

Rating: WORTHY!

Okay, I read these out of order, so sue me! This is the second. I liked the first and did not like the third, but I can report that I liked this one which did not feel like your typical cloned-volume in a series, unlike volume 3 which was essentially a retread of volume 1 with a few details changed.

Since this is an audiobook, I actually listened (as opposed to read) to all three in this series, getting all of them on a discount deal from Chirp which was nice since I liked two of the three. The reading, by Kae Marie Denino, is consistent and enjoyable in all three. The books are also all very short! So, in this one Ava gets an apparently stray cat, which I knew from volume 3 she was both going to get and keep, so no mystery or suspense there. There's also a side story about friendship and fear of losing friends as they make other friends.

The palindrome and other types of word usage are not overdone here, I'm happy to report. The first volume bordered on annoying the reader by putting too much of that in the story, but this one has a lot of story and a lot of heart, so it was appreciated much more, and overall I rate this a worthy read.

Ava XOX by Carol Weston

Rating: WARTY!

This was a tired formulaic story that exemplified everything that's bad about series. I listened to the Ava and Pip original audiobook by this same author recently, and liked it, but this one, also an audiobook, was too much of a 'more of the same' story, which really had no story, and it was pretty much a cookie-cutter clone of the first volume in the series (this is volume 3 which I read out of order, but the order doesn't really matter). The reading by Kae Marie Denino was fine, but the story really wasn't.

In the first volume we had Ava making endless palindromes which was frankly a bit tedious because there were so many of them, but it wasn't awfully bad. There's more of that here, and it's really too much more in a second volume, and it becomes wearing rather than entertaining. Was there not another aspect of the English language the author could have explored here? Additionally, we have Ava once again doing something thoughtless, getting chewed out by other people, fixing it, and then becoming friends with the people who were extremely hostile to her just a short time before. This is exactly what happened in the first story. So what it transmits here is that Ava can't learn and is stupid, which is never a good thing to do to your main character, and it says, I'm making you, the reader/listener, pay a second time for what's essentially the same story with a few details changed, which suggests that the author thinks you're also stupid to fall for the same trick twice.

On top of that, there's the 'hey, I didn't know I loved my best friend' trope, which is tediously common in YA novels, and here it reared its ugly head in a middle-grade book. Again it says the main character is stupid to have failed to realize she has a special bond with her best friend. Even an eleven year old can tell that. It also says her friend Chuck is stupid for failing to realize this in return, and also that he's an insensitive jerk to hang around with Kelli, who is a jerk herself. When he quits seeing her (after too long) the book also says it's fine to lie to people since he doesn't tell her he's done hanging with her because she's a jerk, but because his mom said she didn't want him hanging with people in that way at his age. In short, he outright lied.

The text for the day here is also the same as the first volume, in that it relates to considering others' feelings, but the story actually undermines its own morality tale because, after having had people chew out Ava about her total cluelessness regarding body positivity, it still has her go ahead and put out a poster essentially saying, 'hey fatty, here's how to shed a few'. It's not that bad, obviously, but it might as well be.

So for me this book was a fail because it sent all the wrong messages and often contradictory ones at that. Ava's mother at times seems cruel and cold as well, which is frankly disturbing. Now I have the second book to get through, and I'm thinking it's probably also going to be a redux of volume one. We'll see. At least these books have the advantage of being short!

Ava and Pip by Carol Weston

Rating: WORTHY!

I am not much of a fan of series, so I have to warn up front that this is the first in a series of (so far) three. All three apparently can be read as standalones, so there's that, but I've read only this one, so I can't comment on the series. This first one was actually well-written, funny, entertaining, and has some good life messages for young readers, perhaps the most important of which, in this Internet age, is that once you put something out there in writing, it's very hard to take it back.

Note that I listened to the audio book version of this which was read brilliantly by Kae Marie Denino. Just as the author evidently did with the writing, this woman really put her heart and soul into the novel in reading it, and it showed; so my favorable review isn't solely over the writing, it's also of this reader's contribution which I loved completely and highly recommend.

There's a lot of wordplay in this book, which may delight some and annoy others. I love wordplay, but even I found it a bit much at times, yet it was quite inventive and entertaining in general, so I had mixed feelings about it. Most of the palindromes I had heard before, but some I had not. There's also other types of wordplay and a smattering of English 101 peppered unobtrusively into the text which makes the book quite educational on that score alone.

Ava is the younger sister, Pip the older. Their parents, who have palindromic names (Bob and Anna) gave their children the same thing: Ava Elle, and Pip Hannah, since mom and dad (also palindromes!) are very much into language. Dad is a playwright, for example. Ava, who is ten and looking forward to her palindromic birthday (when she'll turn 11), thinks she wants to be a writer, but she has several unfinished diaries she's given up on.

She makes a fresh start in a new one and actually finishes it over the course of an eventful story in which she becomes her sister's champion over the queen bee (named Bea) at school, who schedules a party on the same day Pip was going to have one. Ava writes a short story for a competition and makes the Queen Bee the center of the story. She has some success with it, but when the real Bea calls her to complain about the story, things start souring for Ava. The thing is that Bea isn't as bad as Ava has painted her and over the course of the book, the two become friends.

I read some negative reviews of this novel which have labeled Ava with the over-used buzzword 'ableist' and torn her off a strip over her trying to get Pip out of her shell, as though Pip is autistic or a chronic shut-in or something, which is nonsensical because it's untrue. Pip is shy and that's all she is, and there's nothing at all wrong in Ava desiring to help her. What's wrong at times is Ava's approach to helping! None of these knee-jerk alarmists seemed to grasp that. Nor did they seem to have any compassion for poor Ava, who feels neglected because her parents focus a lot of attention on Pip.

So this book is a growth experience and a learning curve for Ava, who while admittedly being somewhat spastic and too full of energy at times, is only ten, yet she's learning and caring, and she deserves a better rep than the "nattering nabobs of negativism" are giving her. Yes, that was awful wasn't it? And William Safire ought to be ashamed of it. But the thing is that Ava is a feisty spirit and young kids can learn a lot from her even as she learns of her own shortcomings and works to fix them.

This is a book about bravery and determination, about friendship and sisterhood, about navigating relationships, and about learning and improving oneself, and it deserves to be read.