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penmage
16. 13 Little Blue Envelopes, by Maureen Johnson
Ginny's Aunt Peg was free-spirited and whimsical and magical and unpredictable and wonderful - and then, as suddenly and unpredictably as she had lived, without giving her family any warning at all, she died. A few months later, Ginny recieved a package in the mail from Aunt Peg - a package containing a letter. Contained in the letter was $1000 and instructions to buy a plane ticket to London and visit Aunt Peg's favorite restuarant. At the restuarant, Ginny found the rest of Aunt Peg's package - a packet of thirteen little blue envelopes, with instructions to open each one only after she had completed the task in the previous one. And so off Ginny went to London, to follow Aunt Peg's legacy.
This book is one of those rare, nearly perfect teen novels. It is just. so. good. Ginny is an immensely likeable protagonist, and while her adventures backpacking across Europe ought to be fictionally glamorous, they alternate between being wonderful and unglamorously lonely - ie, realistic. There is romance, but not too much of it - enough to keep things interesting, but not the focus of the book by any means. No, this book is about Ginny's journey of discovery - both about herself and about the aunt she's always idolized. It reads poignant and funny and painful and true, with a couple of twists that I didn't expect, but that made perfect sense. I really loved this book.
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17. The Silent Room, by Walter Sorrells
I was intrigued by this book the moment I saw it, because it is the sort of book that appeals to my kids-struggling-against-wicked-parents guilty pleasure. It's old, it's cliche, I still can't help but be curious about them. In this book, written as a series of letters from Oz to his deceased father, Oz's mother remarries Don, a cruel man who sets out to sneakily destroy Oz's life. He is brutal and mean to Oz, and his mother turns a blind eye, but the worst comes when Don sets Oz up for drug possession, and Oz is sent off to Briarwood, a school for the rehabilitation of juvenile delinquants. Even though Oz knows that it's all a mistake, he is unprepared for the brutality of Briarwood - until he begins to realize that there's something more than a simple rehab school going on. There's something bigger and far more dangerous, and if he and the other kids can't work together to figure it out, he - and his mother - may not survive it.
It's an intriguing premise, but if it sounds familiar, that's because it reminded me of teen's Holes. It feels like the same premise too, if more violent and harsh. It starts strong - so strong that at times, it turned my stomach - but it got weaker as the book went on. Oz's voice was strong and steady throughout, but all the rest of the supporting cast - from the villainous teachers to Oz's fellow students - felt one-dimensional and shallow. It was a dramatic, thrilling suspense story, but because of the lack of character development, the twists fell a little bit flat. All in all, it was an okay read.
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18. The Rules of Survival, by Nancy Werlin
This is another in my Wicked Parent addiction, but this one is far better. In The Rules of Survival, Matt, the oldest of three children, writes a letter to his youngest sister, Emmy, detailing their experiences with their dangerously unstable mother. He says that he is not sure if he will ever give it to her, but that he wants to get it down on paper. He describes how he and his sisters grew up at the whim of their mother, Nikki, whose mood swings and manic obsession with fun controlled thier life. Matt tells how fear and constant vigilance defined life for himself and his sister Callie, as they tried to predict and work with Nikki's moods, and to protect Emmy from her.
This book is powerful and utterly impossible to put down. Matt and Callie's struggles to survive living with their mother are compelling. At one point, Matt mentions that he once thought about telling a teacher about his mother's behavior, but then he realized that nothing he could say could make what Nikki did sound as bad as it was, and the dangers of the foster system were enough to scare him into silence. What's shocking is not just Matt's struggle, without the aid of any of the grownups who should have been there to step in and protect them from their mother (his divorced father, their aunt who lived next door) but the idea that there really could be children living like this, right now. Matt's struggles strike true. They feel real, real enough that someone else, someone real, could be living in just that sort of situation. The Rules of Survival is a compelling, well-written story that is well worth a read.
