I have to admit, I'm still confused by the title.

Airhead (Airhead #1) by Meg Cabot
(Point, 12-14)
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If there ever was a time not to judge a book by it's cover, this is it. Or by it's title.

After reading my first Cabot, Abandon, I took a gander at the other options we had in stock, which entirely consists of this series or Princess Diaries. Reading the back, I discovered Airhead to not at all be what I thought it was. Furthermore, I'd just recently watched Drop Dead Diva, the Lifetime show where an aspiring model dies and ends up in the body of an overweight lawyer.

Airhead is, basically, the opposite. Tomboy, outcast and geek, Emerson Watts is killed by a falling flatscreen television and wakes up in the body of supermodel, Nikki Howard, thanks to the technology of a BRAIN TRANSPLANT.

You know, I don't even like the synopsis on the back of this book. It makes it sound like being Nikki (haha, title of the next book) is going to make all of Em's wildest dreams come true, when actually it puts a serious crimp in her plans, like ever hanging out with her best friend ever again, let alone having him fall in love with her.

I like Em and maybe her most endearing and equally annoying quality is how prejudiced she is against all the mainstream "cool kid" stuff and how becoming Nikki makes her have to rethink some of that, but not all of it. Things like people harping on her beauty regimen gets a bit tiresome, but, despite it being fluff, Cabot has managed to pleasantly surprise me, yet again.

While I definitely enjoyed these books, some parts, while realistic, seem like a little bit of the wrong message to be sending to teenage girls. As an adult, I appreciate the realism, but I feel like teenagers should still be under the impression that boys will like them for who they are, and they shouldn't have to pretend to be helpless to get a man. Or being pretty is helpful in life, but there's a legitimacy to be a tomboy or an outcast, especially when you're sixteen, which I feel kind of gets pushed to the wayside as Em embraces her new life as Nikki. At least the bitchy high schooler gets hers in the end.

Hmm, I'm gonna have to go reread Jane Eyre after this.

Also, Em/Nikki is a total kissing slut, which, I was told by a twelve-year-old in the store, is a common theme in Meg Cabot's books. I mean, I'm all for getting kissed by boys, but really? Every time it happens, even if she doesn't like the boy she goes all woobly in the knees? Not buying it, sorry.

But overall, I enjoyed the series. It's a little far-fetched that most of the vapid celebrities in Em's new life turn out to have hearts of gold, but I'll go with it. Christopher is great in his turns as hero and super-villain. And I like that when Em does stupid things, she at least has the good sense to turn around and smack herself in the head over doing something so stupid. The conspiracy plot got a little confusing in the middle (when you find out what Nikki overheard, you're like, "Really? That's it?") but pulls itself together in the end to be pretty brutal. Things have to wrap up pretty fast, but at least we don't end up with a ten years later epilogue. Hurray!

So, all in all, it was pure fluff, but I liked it.

Being Nikki (Airhead #2) by Meg Cabot
(Point, 12-14)
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Runaway (Airhead #3) by Meg Cabot
(Point, 12-14)
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Pink Stories for Girls That You'll Want to Read.

Continuing on from my last post, I feel I best counter with some pink girly picture books that are actually worth the price of admission.

Fancy Nancy by Jane O'Connor & Robin Preiss Glasser (illustrator)
(HarperCollins, 4-8)
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Yeah, that's right, I said Fancy Nancy. Say what you will about overexposure or commercialism or the buckets of money I'm sure Jane O'Connor is making, where books like Pinkalicious or Princess Penelope falter due to the sheer obnoxiousness of the main character, Nancy Clancy is sweet, genuine little girl with loving relationships and a penchant for the finer things in life. And the large fancy words she loves to use are always explained so the kids learn from the context. (Which also puts it over Princess Penelope where I feel kids probably don't know the word 'reveled', or my problematic reading of Tony Baloney.)

Nancy wishes her life and family were fancier, but instead of being obnoxious, petulant or bratty, she and her family dress up together for special dinners and tea.

I haven't read all of the Fancy Nancy books yet (and there are a lot), but my favorite part of the series is Nancy's relationship with her little sister, who is straight adorable. My particular favorite examples of this are Fancy Nancy: Splendiferous Christmas and Fancy Nancy's Fabulous Fashion Boutique. In Splendiferous Christmas, we see Nancy trotting around in a pretty spectacular pair of leg warmers the entire book long, which she then gives to her little sister at the end. In Fabulous Fashion Boutique, the Clancys have a yard sale the week before Nancy's little sister JoJo's birthday. When Nancy sells a necklace that JoJo really wanted instead of giving it to her for her birthday, she realizes her mistake and buys it back instead of saving her money for the fancy fan she wanted. JoJo is thrilled and their parents reward Nancy by buying her the fan. Nancy and JoJo are just the sweetest and it's a nice message about doing good things and good things will come back to you.

Fancy Nancy: Splendiferous Christmas by Jane O'Connor & Robin Preiss Glasser (illustrator)
(HarperCollins, 4-8)
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fancy Nancy's Fabulous Fashion Boutique by Jane O'Connor & Robin Preiss Glasser (illustrator)
(HarperCollins, 4-8)
My rating: 4 of 5 stars




Shoe-La-La! by Karen Beaumont & LeUyen Pham (illustrator)
(Scholastic, 4-8)
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is, straight up, a SUPER cute book. Four diverse little girls, Emily, Ashley, Kaitlyn and Claire, go shoe shopping. Yeah, it's a pretty simple plot. But it has a lovely rhyming structure of all the different and wacky shoes they try on. And it's full of gorgeous drawings by LeUyen Pham, who also illustrated Julianne Moore's Freckleface Strawberry.

There's really not too much else to say. This one I wouldn't say even just relegates to girly girls, since they aren't just looking at fancy shoes, but all sorts of fun and wild shoes. A great read aloud with gorgeous pictures and four fabulous little girls.


Alice the Fairy by David Shannon
(Blue Sky Press, 4-8)
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'll admit it, at first I was a little put off by David Shannon's illustrations, both in this and his No, David! series. They're kind of creepy, with lopsided arms and big spaces between the teeth and other adults I've spoken to have said the same. However, I've never heard a kid say anything of the sort, they just love his books. So I gave Shannon a chance.

Alice's story is telling you all about how she's a Temporary Fairy and all the things that means she can do (and some things that only Permanent Fairies can do). Frankly, Alice the Fairy is what Princess Penelope is trying to be. Alice is more precocious than bratty, even when she's trouble, there's some sense of remorse, or at least that she knows she's done something wrong, instead of Penelope's indignance. Plus frankly it's just cute (using her fairy magic, she turns her dad's cookies into hers). Alice is a little girl with flaws and humor and she's even a little self-effacing which really works for the story. Really cute and wonderful.

So those are my pink little girl stories I really like. Still need a princess story to replace that Penelope, though.

There's only so many vampire stories even I can do.

I love vampires, don't get me wrong, but they are rabidly over-played and most of my vampire patience gets taken up by my television watching: True Blood, The Vampire Diaries (neither of which I read the books to) and, of course, Buffy and Angel reruns. So in my young adult reading, I find it refreshing to find some really good (no Twilight here people) paranormal fiction. And we're going to try and stay away from the vampires here entirely.

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
(Scholastic, 13+)
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The most fitting into that Twilight sort of genre of anything I'm likely to recommend on this blog. It's a love story with werewolves. And the love story is slightly like something you've seen before: boy watches girl from afar before circumstances align for them to interact face to face. It's Edward Cullen, it's Angel, it's Stefan Salvatore, or Bill Compton or any of those vampire guys. But Sam's a werewolf, and not your average werewolf at that. Stiefvater's werewolves aren't ruled by the moon or able to change of their own volition, their physical state depends on the temperature out. When it's cold is when they turn into wolves, and they spend the entirety of the winter months in that state. Respectively they spend the summer as humans, however as time goes on they turn into wolves more and more easily until they spend all of their time that way. And moving to a warmer climate would only make it worse.

So Sam watches Grace from afar, aware that his situation would make being together impossible. Especially since we find out that Grace has been bitten by a werewolf but never changed, so her becoming a werewolf is equally impossible.

The writing is lovely, the story is interesting and although there is a sequel, Linger, and an upcoming conclusion to the trilogy, Forever, I actually really loved Shiver as a one-shot. I bought Linger, but it just continues to chill on my bookshelf waiting to be read.

Alternately we next come to two of my very favorite young adult trilogies ever.

The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong
(HarperCollins, 12+)
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I first started reading Kelley Armstrong many years ago when my coworkers at Walden ooks convinced me to pick up Bitten, the first in her Women of the Otherworld series and as solid a piece of adult paranormal fiction as they come. But as these things usually do, her more recent entries in the series haven't been as good as her early efforts. The complete opposite is true of her young adult work. Not only is it better than her current adult novels, each book in the Darkest Powers Trilogy is better than the previous one.

It actually took me a minute before I picked up The Summoning because from reading the blurb it seemed to skew a little younger than I was feeling at the moment. (Although being twenty-five in the YA section, who knows where I'm going with that thought.) But Chloe is a realistic fifteen-year-old who does a lot of growing up during the series. Oh, and she's also a necromancer as we find out during the course of the books.

The series is populated with werewolves, ghosts, witches, a large conspiracy theory, many characters you don't know whether to trust or not and a really well-done teenage love triangle. I mean, I know who I was pulling for, but I had a real question as to which she'd go for.

The Awakening by Kelley Armstrong
(HarperCollins, 12+)
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Reckoning by Kelley Armstrong
(HarperCollins, 12+)
My rating: 5 of 5 stars






The second trilogy in the series starts this year with the upcoming The Gathering, and while I'm sad that Chloe's story is at an end, I appreciate Armstrong's willingness to take on another character so as not to wear the first one out, as she did with the Otherworld series (which, for the curious, takes place in the same universe).

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
(Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 13+)
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Libba Bray's first novel introduces us to Gemma Doyle, the titular character of the trilogy. Gemma is in Mary Lennox-like circumstances when her mother dies and she's removed from her beloved India and replaced into Victorian England. This book encompasses the historical with the fantastical, a portal story as well as a paranormal one, and throws it into a Victorian boarding school where the girls are as much teenage, and often mean, girls as any contemporary YA story. Oh yeah, and there's a love interest too.

I'm going to have a problem genuinely reviewing this series, cause I just adore it so much. Let me just say, it has everything, is well-written and made me cry. And I cry very rarely. (Pretty much only at that one scene in Gone With the Wind with Mammy and Melanie talking on the stairs. And also Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. But only the first time.)

Basically if you enjoy any of the sorts of stories I mentioned, you have to read this. Double if you are or ever have been a teenage girl.

Rebel Angels by Libba Bray
(Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 13+)
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray
(Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 13+)
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Storytime 2/22/11

Storytime at Scholastic tends to attract mostly babies, considering it runs at 11am on weekday mornings. However this week the NYC kids are off from school, so we had some older kids, which is so much nicer. Unfortunately I didn't realize this while picking the books, but it still went okay.

Olivia Forms a Band by Ian Falconer
(Simon & Schuster, 3-7)
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I love Olivia, but this one is just not as solid as the original. Olivia's mother is taking them to the fireworks and Olivia wants to know if there will be a band, because there has to be a fireworks band. When her mother assumes not, Olivia decides that she'll be the band. While cute, the plot sort of meanders then when Olivia finishes being a band and focuses on other things like her make-up. The images, however, are always worth the price of admission and the crash-bang-twink-ploink noises of Olivia's band make for a fun read-aloud.

Break for "Itsy-Bitsy Spider." Had to shy away from the normal baby-ness of songs like "ABC" or "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." Maybe next time I'll go with "The People in Your Neighborhood."

Tony Baloney by Pam Muñoz Ryan & Edwin Fotheringham
(Scholastic, 4-8)
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Cute with bright illustrations, but it's only just an okay read. Far and away the best part of the whole book is Dandelion the stuffed ostrich, who helps Tony Baloney with his problems by sitting and taking notes like a psychiatrist, and is clearly the source of any trouble going on. The dynamics between Tony Baloney and his siblings (one older and bossy and twin babies) doesn't ring quite as true, and I found the plot more annoying than Tony did his siblings. Also, I had to stop and explain the word "exasperated" to the kids, and while new vocabulary is always good, they wouldn't have figured it out on their own from the context. There's a cute gimmick in the writing, where Tony says things like, "for twenty years, or maybe just an hour", but it doesn't flow in the narrative very well, although that could've just been from reading it for the first time.

Cat the Cat, Who Is That? by Mo Willems
(Balzer + Bray, newborn-5)
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The simplest Willems for the youngest use, but really perhaps too simple. I agree with a reviewer on Goodreads who stated this might be better suited as a board book than in picture book form. However, it's saved by the alien/monster at the end ("Blarggie Blarggie!") and a sweet message.

Break for the "Hokey Pokey," my very favorite and a good one with the older kids. Also, later in the day a lady came in with a "The Hokey Pokey really is what's it's all about" t-shirt, so that made me happy.

Ivy Loves To Give by Freya Blackwood
(Arthur A. Levine, 4-8)
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Beautifully drawn Ivy loves to give presents to the people (and animals) in her life, but she doesn't always get it right (glasses for the dog, tea for the chicken). Cute and silly at times, Ivy's story is very sweet when she does give the right gifts and her sister gives her a gift in return. A nice story in the vein of "it's better to give than receive" and about sharing. A nice short read-aloud with lovely illustrations and fun for the kids to point out Ivy's mistakes.

Cat Secrets by Jef Czekaj
(Balzer + Bray, 3-6)
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Originally I gave this book four stars because it's super adorable and I anticipated some awesomeness with storytime. I still think it's really cute, but it doesn't translate to storytime quite like I hoped. The interactive bits are great, my kids were fabulous meowers, but there's a LOT of pages where the cats are just staring at you listening. Almost like the pauses in Dora the Explorer, only you don't actually need that in the a storybook. Still, very cute and interactive.

All in all, a successful storytime, although I think the only one I'd pick again would be Ivy Loves to Give, especially for the two to five range. Maybe on another baby day, I'd bust out Cat the Cat and Cat Secrets. Sorry, Dandelion, but Tony Baloney misses out. And I'd pick a different Olivia book, cause there are far superior ones.