Sophie Washington the Snitch by Tonya Duncan Ellis

Rating: WARTY!

This is a really short book (seventy screens on my phone) and even then I could not finish it. I read only the first chapter. It was in first person which I can't usually stand, and worse than that, it was about bullying and the lack of a response to it. That's where the snitch comes in - apparently no one wants to be tarred by that brush, so when the school bully, a girl named Lanie, robs school-friends Sophie and Chloe of their money right after they arrive at school, nothing gets done.

Now you can argue "well isn't that the point of the story?" - revealing how something will change and something will get done? But I don't buy that, because this story has been done so many times before and this one offers nothing new, nothing different. A better story would have been to have a school where snitching isn't a crime - because it should not be. You report crimes. You report bullying. You report robbery. It's bad to have children feel they should not, and it doesn't matter if the story eventually gets there. The problem is that it's not there to begin with. A better story-teller would have started from that point and found some other issue to address, or some other way to tell her story instead of stamping a 'wrong' firmly onto the brains of juvenile and impressionable readers right from the off.

Because this story was going nowhere new and started from very tired trope, I can't commend it as a worthy read. I couldn't stand to read it. Maybe the readers it's aimed at might find it more readable, but that still wouldn't make it right.

The Humiliations of Pipi McGee by Beth Vrabel

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I started out really liking this book, but it developed two major strikes against it. The first was that the ending really went downhill into complete unbelievability for me, so the last twenty percent or so was an unpleasant read. That wasn't the worst part though. The worst was that the main Character Penelope McGee, never ever seemed to learn!

I don't mind reading about a dumb female character if she turns herself around, or if she has some other qualities that come to light, but "Pipi" never changed. As the story went on, she proved herself to be actually worse than anyone she had a vendetta against, and on top of that she proved weak, unassertive, and just completely lackluster, willing to betray friends, family, anyone, to get what she wanted. She was not a nice person and had little thought for the consequences of the poor choices and decisions she persisted in making.

The basis story is that in her last year of middle school, she unilaterally decides she can wipe her slate clean and start high school with a fresh outlook. She determines, against the better advice of her friends to whom she pays little heed, that the only way to do this is to seek vengeance on everyone who wronged her, and try to wipe out her humiliations. She talks like this will be redemption, but she really doesn't act like any of it is. It felt like a real shame to me because some parts of the story were really good, and there was this one nose-piercing scene which mede me laugh out loud, but such meager leavening in a book that is otherwise sinking does far too little to improve matters.

On top of this, her story is presented against the backdrop of what has to be the worst middle school in the entire country. There is no discipline there, the teachers are all either bullies or idiots, and there is absolutely zero parental involvement whatsoever. It's not surprising then that there was open and unchecked bullying going on in this school, which the teachers never did a thing about.

One of the teachers openly bullied the girls, yet there never were any repercussions, for example with parents making complaints about her. The principal of the school was female and all this was going on under her watch, so what message does this send about female competency? It was a disgrace. It was so unrealistic as to be more of a caricature than anything that felt real.

Pipi herself was also a caricature in practice, because everything presented in this story was either stark black or it was glaring white. there was no subtlety here; no shades of gray. On top of that, Pipi had to be one of the most self-centered and ignorant characters I've ever encountered. It was pretty obvious that one of the main characters was gay and Pipi never figured this out at all. She was so self-focussed and self-obsessed that it never occurred to her that other people might be real people with feelings and secrets and problems and worries.

On a technical level, this book was not helped by submitting it to Amazon's crappy Kindle conversion process. Personally I refuse to have any truck at all with Amazon for a variety of reasons, but one repeated problem I see with review books that come to me in Kindle format is that they have evidently been submitted to Amazon with far too many expectations for the end result, and the ebook comes back looking like a mess. If the publisher or author doesn't vet the resulting ebook for quality, the review ebook gets sent out to reviewers looking like a disaster.

I see this a lot with a variety of books. In this particular instance, there were page headers and page numbers blended into the body of the text. There was random bolding of text here and there, and all of the images at the start of the book were sliced, diced, and julienned. Kindle does this routinely. You cannot submit a book to Kindle for conversion unless it is the plainest of vanilla - nothing fancy, no images, no text boxes, no page headings or numberings, no tables, charts, or anything remotely fancy. Essentially it must be just plain vanilla text, otherwise Amazon will completely mangle it for you.

Here's an example. At one point I read the following:
Ricky glanced around, nodding at me, then sat (this part was bold. The text line ended here)
next to Tasha. (this was on the next line and was regular text)
Tasha even wore makeup today—something she rarely did—her lipstick and eyeliner a bright turquoise blue. When I asked her about it, she (this was the next couple of lines, all bolded)
said Eliza showed her how to do it. (this, the next line, was back to regular text).

On another page (evidently page 107!) I read this:
It’s just how I pictured Freya.” 1 07 Tasha grinned.
There were also random examples of a bold lower case letter 'f' appearing in the middle of the text like so:
"The dots disappeared.
f
I called Sarah over and over,"
I have no idea what that was all about.

So technical issues aside, I cannot commend this as a worthy read when it has such a limp and misguided main character who never seems to learn her lesson and yet for whom everything magically works out in the end? No. Sorry but no! That's way too much fiction for my taste!

Honey Moon Not Your Valentine by Sofi Benitez, Joyce Magnin, Christina Weidman

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is the third and last of this series I shall ever read! I liked this much better than the previous two, and I think that's because it really didn't feature Harry Moon, but his sister with the unfortunate name of Honey Moon. I liked her a lot better than him - at least she did something, but her behavior tended towards the mean and the cowardly, and instead of making the right protestations, she made the wrong ones, but like her brother, she never seemed to learn anything, least of all how dumb she was.

The book had its amusing moments, but otherwise was really nothing new, and it presented children with the wrong options, I thought. The entire story was of Honey Moon's completely misguided attempts to get out of a Valentine's Day dance, and int his it suffered precisely the main problem that the previous "Harry the magician" series suffered: if only people would talk to each other instead of acting like idiots and flying off the handle, then most of their problems would never arise. How hard is it to advise children to talk to one another - and to responsible adults? No magic required!

Again the book featured bullying, but never once was it suggested the children do the right thing - go tell a grown up, preferably a teacher if this happens at school! It's really that simple. Instead of addressing Honey's problem, the so-called man of the house quotes the Bible to Honey: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink." The idea is to show kindness, but he conveniently fails to quote the sentence which follows that in Romans 12:20 though: "In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head."

It's hardly a kindness to shame someone so much that they feel like this, and most of the time it will not work. One again the Bible is the last place to go to get good advice for modern times, but it is a great place for reading about bullying and rejoicing in brutality. The whole point of this advice was to show kindness to those who bully you. Well, good luck with that half-assed plan. No, the way to deal with bullying at school is to REPORT IT! For goodness sakes, REPORT IT! If you want to show kindness to bullies, then advise them that if they do not stop, you will report it, and if they do not stop, then REPORT IT! It's that simple.

Once again the illustrations - all of white folks as usual, and yes you can judge this book by its cover - were done by Christina Weidman, but either she never read this novel, or the author did a poor job in describing Honey Moon to her. In the text, Honey's hair is described thus: "Her wild brown curls waved crazily in all directions." A couple of pages later it's described as a "wild mane," and later still as "long curly hair," so the take-home message is long, wild and curly, yet her hair is consistently illustrated pretty much as kempt, short, and straight: pretty much a bob! Even when she's depicted climbing out of a box of basketballs in which she'd tried to hide, her hair is straight, and very nearly perfectly arranged.

Again the book was formatted with unnecessarily wide-margins, and widely-spaced paragraphs so I'm getting the distinct impression that neither the authors nor the publisher has any love of trees. This, too, is a really poor message to send to children and overall, I cannot recommend this volume either.

Lila and the Crow by Gabrielle Grimard

Rating: WORTHY!

Young Lila is new in town. With her darker skin, jet black hair, and onyx eyes, she might have felt different, but on that first day she has no thoughts of anything but making friends. It's not to be. Once one kid starts the chant that Lila's hair is dark as a crow's feathers, it seems her dreams have been broken. No matter how she tries to hide her differences, the kids find new ways to tease and bully her.

When her despair is at its peak, she realizes this crow, which seems to have been following her around, is really trying to tell her something. When she finally, truly, looks at the bird, she sees something new there - something she never saw before, and it's this insight and her determination not to give up which finally wins her the friends she has dreamed of.

This is a beautifully illustrated book in watercolors, with well-written, heartfelt text, and a fine story to tell. I loved it.

The Sham by Ellen Allen

Title: The Sham
Author: Ellen Allen
Publisher: BookBaby
Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
p122 "...Mary Poppins Stylie..." should be "...Mary Poppins Style..."
p172 "-Whose 'they', Jack?" should be "-Who's 'they', Jack?" or better, "-Who're 'they', Jack?"

Nothing is labeled in this novel - no chapter numbering, and so on. It's highly unconventional - which just goes to show that it can be done! I skipped what appeared to be the prologue because I don't ever do prologues, and I began at what appeared to be chapter one, which was titled, 'The argument or how "muzzling a sparrow" can kill a friendship'.

I didn't know this when I chose to read this for review, but the novel is set in Britain, which soon became apparent from certain word choices. Since I was raised in Britain, this was a bonus for me. It was really nice to read a YA story which was not set in the USA. There actually are other nations on this planet and I fear for American youth that some of them, fed a constant diet of US based children's and YA stories, may not actually realize this!

This is a first person PoV novel which I normally detest, but in this case it wasn't written obnoxiously, so the author escaped another one of my traps! Well done! Rebecca Pearce, Becky, Catherine Emms, and Kitty Jelfs are evidently the school bullies, but the twist is that one of them and the main protagonist, Emily Heath, are indirectly related. It's one of the rules in novels that no two characters ever have the same name, so it was nice to see that trope being given the finger here, but I have to say it was slightly confusing in the opening chapter because it was not at all clear to me initially that Becky and Rebecca were not the same person.

Nor was it clear which one was Emily's step-relation. It's explained later. It was obviously not Cath or Kitty, but I honestly got to wondering if Rebecca and Becky actually were the same person, yet perceived as two people by Emily for some reason. It actually also occurred to me that Emily might also be Rebecca and Becky, suffering from a weird personality disorder, but that seemed to be stretching things a bit too far! I later learned that all of them are in fact separate people.

I love the way the author enjoys the English language as exemplified by the dichotomy between the two meanings of 'cleave' which she defines for us (with an end note referencing dictionary.com yet!). This - not the reference, but the delight the author took in the contrary definitions of the same word - was one of several things which initially lent me confidence that here might be a worthy tale for me. I love authors who share the same relish for the language that I do.

The four girls are not only the school bullies, but also the out-of-school bullies, and the story begins with them bullying a ten-year-old boy whom they apparently abducted from a supermarket, and who's scared to death of them. This takes place on Xmas eve, in a children's play area, where Emily happens to be pushing her young sister Lily, on the swings.

It's cold and wet, already a miserable evening, and Emily is scared of these girls, but she finds the guts to at least confront their antics, if not their actual behavior pattern. Someone needs to, because their bullying is vicious and calculated. These girls behave as if they have nothing to lose, but fortunately Jack shows up to save the day. Rebecca and Becky are quite well-drawn; Cath and Kitty not so much. I have to say that it was really creepy the way Rebecca's every statement was phrased as a question, and no one remarked upon it. Actually this is a creepy story, and perfectly titled as you'll see when you reach the end...and all becomes clear.

I was warned by the author and in some reviews I read, that this is a pretty graphic novel for a novel that's actually not a graphic novel, and I phrase it that way purposefully, because although the abuse depicted in this first chapter is nasty and beyond what we normally find in YA books, it was tame compared with what I'd expected after all those warnings I received! Indeed it was tame as compared with what we see in many actual graphic novels.

Make no mistake - it's mean and evil, but it's not as bad as I'd been led to believe it would be. For me, the interesting issue here was why these warnings were even felt necessary. The age range for young adult literature is typically given as 14 - 24, which to me is too big of a range given the changes which occur to children as they mature from one age to the other, and end up as adults, but the upper end of that range should not have to be warned that there's a novel out there which depicts real life! Are our young adults so sheltered and coddled that this is a requirement? That's truly sad.

PG 13 movies typically show activities of the kind depicted here, so I don't really get what the issue is. Do people think YA novels should be fairy-tale like? Because we get way too many of those, and too many of those are awful. Clearly people who had issues with this writing have never seen a movie like To Sir, with Love which actually featured one incident reminiscent of one featured during this episode. I don't know what that movie was rated, but it's an ancient movie and I don't know of any scandal that was associated with it even back then, regarding inappropriateness of subject matter. Young adult readers need to tighten their sphincter.

There were some glitches in the writing (I'll give some examples), but in general this novel is very well written. No huge grammatical faux pas or spelling mistakes (unless you think British spelling is a mistake lol! - but the Brits had it first, remember?!). So here's the first: judgment was spelled as judgement on page 116, but I don't recall if that's acceptable in Britain.

There were one or two instances where I wondered if the wording sounded right, such as, on page 28: "...grabbed my hand. I took it willingly...". If a person grabs your hand, you're not in a position to take their hand, so this sounded odd to me. If it had read "...and I accepted it willingly..." or "...and I let him..." it would have sounded better.

I realize, of course, that these might be purely picky and persnickety personal preferences (great alliteration, huh?), but I would question the use of "sites" versus "sights" on page 42 (and again on page 123 and 126). There was also the use of 'eking it out' (page 151). I would have chosen 'sticking it out' since the phrase which is used just doesn't seem right to me. Another example is "He took the keys out of the engine" (page 159). Unless car design has dramatically changed in Britain since I lived there, the keys aren't in the engine but in the steering column! One last example that struck me: on pages 168-9 we read: "…Piggy wasn't on his way back in, pulling on his sweats." Emily was the one pulling on the sweats, but this made it seem like Piggy might be on his way back in pulling on his sweats!

I must confess to serious misgivings over Emily's treatment of her young sister - who is at one point in a pram (perambulator - a rather elaborate stroller) covered with blankets. So far so good, but it's dark, it's cold, we're told it's "pelting" with rain, yet instead of getting Lily home, Emily is romping around with Jack (yes, I'll get to him in a minute). Fortunately for poor Lily, the rain seems to disturbingly quickly morph to sleet and then snow. We are told at one point that Lily is toasty warm, but I found that hard to credit because we're not told that she has any waterproof cover tacked across the pram to keep the rain out, so we're left to assume that this cold shower is seeping into the blankets and percolating through to the child, yet this doesn't appear to concern Emily.

At one point Emily leaves Lily completely unattended - just for a short time, but nonetheless unattended - on the dark tow path by a river, while she goes off into the bushes with Jack to look at something he's obsessed with: a sign that's been appearing all over town "Igertay" in red letters. This is no excuse to leave a toddler unattended on a dark path in the pouring rain. It's irresponsible behavior for both of them. OTOH, people do behave irresponsibly, especially teenagers, so this isn't a problem with how the character is represented, but it was a serious impediment to me as a reader, actually liking that character. I didn't like Emily.

Now about "Jack". Yes. I have what almost amounts to an allergy over the use of the name 'Jack' for characters in YA stories. It's the most over-used and clichéd name ever, and it's frankly nauseating to read it any more. Can we not have a hero who isn't named Jack? Is every adventurous scallywag forced to have this name? Can we not have a sullen, deep, hair-in-his-eyes bad boy named something other than Jack? Please?

In the interest of full disclosure, I had vowed never to read another YA novel which boasts a main character named jack and I knew, going into this particular novel, that there was such a character. I did warn the author that this was a problem for me, but I promised that I would endeavor to overcome this almost insurmountable set-back.... I will try and deal with these characters, every man-jack of them! The truth is that I relented because I love the author's symmetrical name - with only one vowel difference between the two halves! (Really?!).

Emily lives with her family over a grocery shop that they run. Jack shows up much later that same day at the shop, which is open after midnight on Xmas eve. This seemed highly improbable to me, but not completely impossible, I guess. This is really where the story starts, because shortly after this, bodies start turning up - and they all seem to be part of that fearsome foursome with which Emily tangled on Xmas Eve. The main suspect is Jack!

The ending, I felt, would have been better had it the explanation been organically arrived at by someone, rather than being revealed in the way it was. The revelation scene didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. The police did not behave, it seemed to me, as they would have in real life, but then we'd had it made quite clear prior to this, that they were incompetent, so maybe this did work!

Both Emily and Jack needed serious hospital treatment, which both of them seemed to brush off. This wasn't realistic to me. Personally I felt that if each of them had truly cared for the other, then they would have been far more concerned about each other's health and welfare than they were, particularly given Jack's condition.

Anyway, enough rambling and meandering asides. I don't do stars (as I like to make quite clear) because to me a novel is either worth reading or isn't. I can't rate a novel half worth reading, so every novel I read is either a five star or a one star (since zero stars isn't an option!). This one, to me, was a worthy read despite the issues I had, because overall it was inventive, it was original, it was strongly written, it had decent characters (if behaving improbably at times), and it had something intelligent to say and an intelligent way to say it, so I recommend it.