Kittenpie Reads KidLit

by Libba Bray. Reviewed for Random House. For more information on this title, see here.

(about publisher reviews on kittenpie reads)

Though largely set in Victorian England, this book open with Gemma chafing to leave her home in India and go to London. She is now 16, after all. Her journey to England is set in motion when a strange vision comes over her, and she sees her mother kill herself rather than be claimed by some mysterious creature while in the company of an unknown man. This shadow cast over her family, she is to go off to finishing school at Spence to be made marriageable. This is not quite what happens there, however.

Instead, Gemma learns more about the strange amulet her mother gave her, and about the visions she continues to have.It turns out that she is a conduit to another place, a centrepoint of the next generation of a group of women known as the Order who can access this land and the magic therein. It isn't all as beautiful as it looks, though, because there is a dark side, and someone known as Circe wants control.

As she learns more about the past from a diary, it seems that it is a hunger for power that caused things to go astray when the last generation of girls entered this other land, the Realms, and that they had been sealed to prevent Circe from crossing into our world. Which means that there is current danger of repeating history or allowing Circe to manipulate one of the girls in Gemma's circle by opening the portal again.

The ending does wrap things up fairly nicely, though there are sequels, which I appreciate. I don't love to be left hanging! I am curious about the sequels, though.

Although a substantial read at over 400 pages, the book moves along fairly quickly and drew me in enough that I read it in a few days, even as a slower reader. I loved the language in many places, and enjoyed that while it has a Victorian setting and some Victorian conventions, it moved faster than your average Victorian novel, and had enough rebellious sentiments among the girls to appeal to a modern girl's sensibility, particularly in the slightly naughty pranks and the horror at Pippa's being forced into a marriage with a much older and quite unappealing man.

All in all, I'm not surprised that this has been a big hit. It had a long holds list at the library for some time, and was much-requested in-branch, with lots of girls wanting to read it. It was one with great media push at the outset, as well, but unlike some books, I think this one has substance behind all of that. It's a great read for a teen girls, with its gothic and fantasy elements being well-handled, but not the whole story, and the characters being very strong and relateable.

Now off to reserve the next one in the set...

Labels: 2003, girly, good stuff, growing up, historical fiction, suspense, teen, witches and wizards

by Louise Rennison. Book #8 in the Georgia Nicolson series.


Oh my giddygodspajamas (as Georgia might say), how I love these. Truly, I can't read them in public because I tend to gigle, snort, and ocasionally howl, they are so damn funny. This last is no less ridiculous, with family madness continuing, a class camping trip looming, and not one but two potential boys to figure out?

How to choose between a Luuurve God who has said he is free for you and a Sex God who has returned from afar without notice or known reason? Ack! Yes, our girl Gee is stumped, and as such, acts like a crazy loon. As you do. (If you're Georgia.) And there's Dave the Laugh. Why does he keep popping up in her thoughts? He's just a mate. Right?

So yes, still funny after all these years, though I must admit - the bouncing back and forth between and not noticing Dave is starting to wear thin. I had figured this would be the book where she pulled him into the mix of her boy confusion, but no, it is more of the same, and she still has not figured that one out by the end. So while I continue to love them... She'd better at least add him to the list by next book, or I may just give up entirely.

Labels: 2007, fluff, girly, good stuff, humour, love story, teen

by Paul Kropp. Reviewed for Random House. See more info on this title here.



(a word on publisher reviews at kittenpie reads)



This book is subtitled Definitely not a book about baseball. Well, yes, most definitely not. I can see how that subtitle could be necessary, I suppose, given the title and the fact that the author is a man, and people could easily jump to the conclusion that this one is about sports, not about dating, as it actually is.



This book is also definitely fluffy, and a teen read, focussing entirely on Al's project to get himself a girl. The twist is that when he tries and gets shot down by one of the less popular but very smart girls in his class, she offers to hire out as a consultant and guide to the world of dating and what girls want. A dating coach.

They sign a contract, and the fun begins. He tries and practices and stumbles a good few times, and she points out where he went wrong, prepares him for the next steps, and basically grooms him to treat a girl properly. In the end, she discovers that he has made good headway based entirely on a lie, and quits, just in time for him to get dumped anyhow. She sets him up on one last blind date, though, giving the book a "twist ending" once she thinks he is fully prepared.

I say a "twist ending" in quotations because, well, it was predictable. As were the ways in which he messes up - you see them coming well down the road as he builds towards them. Still, it was an easy read on a topic of high interest to teens, and because of the main character being male and all, this could appeal to boys as much as girls already familiar with the dating genre. The thing I particularly liek about that is that the advice is, in fact, pretty solid, and Al's friend who tries to give him advice and pass himself off as a well-seasoned ladies' man is exposed as a total fraud, his opinions rendered as useless as they really are. So if boys would read this? They might actually improve their own chances by acting like the boy a girl really does want to date, and wouldn't that be a boon to both sexes?

Labels: 2005, Canadian, fluff, love story, teen

Reena takes a pretty hands-off approach, but gives him enough to do to keep him occupied, and lets him see her empathetic way with her customers, a mix of homeless morning visitors, college kids, and neighbourhood eccentrics. Eventually, she gets him a bike and sets up a delivery service that puts him in contact with some real characters, and he finds himself making friends, opening up a bit, and seeing people in a new way. He slips up now and then, but on the whole, he is making some progress, and even starts talking to his aunt about what is happening in his life a bit.


The book is nicely written, pulling you along through vignettes and small epiphanies one after another at a pace that moves quickly, yet doesn't feel too hurried. I did feel at times that it was all happening a little more easily, with less struggling on Lee's part, than I might have expected, perhaps even too easily, but on examining it, I got the gut feel that Lee was at heart a good kid who had fallen into bad circumstances, and that he had been caught early enough not to give over to the growing internal anger entirely.

Labels: 2007, Canadian, friendship, good stuff, growing up, issues, teen

by Meg Rosoff. Reviewed for Doubleday/Random House. Here is their info on the title.

(a note about publisher reviews and kittenpie reads)

This was one of those much-hyped titles this last fall/winter season, so I was curious, because it sounded interesting, with the vague descriptions I heard, and because I've never read anything by this author before. It was an interesting book - a looking back, a sort of reverie of a time in the narrator's life that changed and stuck with him.

Labels: 2008, friendship, good stuff, growing up, love story, teen

Okay, so I sort of took a break there for a while...
I read a bunch of grownup books, wallowed in bodily discomfort some, worked on my house a few times, started a new library branch, and so on.
But now I've read a new fistful of books, so expect reviews to fly fast and furious the next couple of days, as I get cover images loaded, books written up, and more books moved off of the building stack.
Back to the kidlit I love!

by Stephen J. Brooks, ill. Linda Crockett. From Purple Sky Publishing, a small press from Missouri.

First: here's my promise about Publisher Reviews, reviews of books which, like this one, have been sent to me by the publisher for review.

Second: This book was suggested to me by the publisher as possibly fitting the category of Advanced Picture Book. Here's a little information about those in general and what they are.

This picture books announces from the sparkly-titled, purply-hued, puffy-textured front cover that it is a book for a girly girl. The inside pages, in illustration and in story, follow this through and won't disappoint the frilliest, most princess-and-unicorn obssessed of young ones.

I am, I will be honest, not a girly girl or particularly in love with overly girly stories, so my first reaction to this is not to b drawn in, but to approach with caution! Knowing this of myself, I decided to test this one on someone who is a girly girl - my daughter, Pumpkinpie, of nearly four years of age. And much as it is not what I would choose, it is now a nightly read because it is right up her alley.

The story is simple - a young girl sneaks out at bedtime in her finest princess garb, mounts a unicorn, and rides away to a magic clearing filled with fairies, elves, and unicorns, who will race in the moonlight. The princess decides the winner, and rides back to bed as the fairies begin a great goodie-laden feast. Whether this is dream or fantasy or real live magic is left unclear, and not addressed.

The illustrations are, thoughout, suffused with pink and purple and a sort of glow about the characters that suggests magic. They are, in some places, quite realistic, while in other places have a touch of impressionism about them. For someone like Pumpkinpie, who adores this sort of thing, they are quite lovely, in fact, although they are not, as I say, to my personal taste.

Although I had hoped this would be a more advanced picture book to be more in line with this site's usual age ranges, it was quite suitable for someone as young as three, like Pumpkinpie, as the content is quite gentle. I can see, though, that a girl of 7 or 8 who was reading early chapters with a girly bent such as the My Secret Unicorn series or any of a number of the fairy series available right now would love it. I certainly have plenty of girls in that older age bracket at the library still asking for slightly schlocky princess-y stuffthat makes me cringe a bit - and they would adore it!

This book is available through the publisher or from Amazon.

Labels: 2007, Advanced Picture Books, animal story, girly, Publisher Reviews

by John Van de Ruit.

Spud is the nickname granted to the 13-year-old John Milton, new arrival at boarding school, who has not yet reached puberty. While this is a source of some embarrassment, it also grants him the most beautiful voice in school, his ticket to stardom in the school play and among the girls joining his school to perform it. Besides this ongoing internal struggle, though, he has plenty of other things to deal with, for he is, as he frequently notes, surrounded by lunacy. His family is completely bonkers and embarrass him at school funtions frequently, though they seem favourites among the faculty. He finds some friends among the teachers, too, though they are rife with their own issues and quirks. And finally, he resides in a dorm that becomes known over the year as "The Crazy Eight."

The Crazy Eight are a pretty motley cast of characters, each with a nickname and his own oddity. There are, for example, Gecko, the sickly one; Fatty, the great eater; Mad Dog, the hunter; Rambo, the macho man; and RainMan, the demented one. There are ferocious rivalries with other boys that lead to occasionally vicious pranks, there are school traditions like birthday hazing to keep up with, and there are Rambo's own invented challenges, like the night swim which leads to disaster not once but twice. All this makes for one heck of a crazy school year, but one in which Spud learns a lot, grows a lot, and though his voice doesn't crack yet by the end, he is a whole lot closer to becoming the man he wants to be.

The book has heart and hilarity in equal measure, and had me often enough laughing out loud like a loon on the subway. If you like a good laugh and you don't mind the looks you get from the other transit riders when you crack up, I'd recommend this one, for certain.

Labels: 2007, growing up, humour, loved it, set abroad, teen

by Brandon Sanderson.


This book is a fantasy mixed with a comedy, a sort of Harry Potter meets Daniel Pinkwater. Throw in a smidge of Lemony Snicket, for the evil conspiracies and because Alcatraz often addresses the reader in asides about writing conventions and about what sort of person he really is, after all. But the book, or Alcatraz, that is, insists that it is in fact non-fiction, an autobiography and record of true events, and written to set the record straight, although he acknowledges that librarians will bill it as fantasy to keep the lid on the true nature of their nefarious world domination.

It's silly, it's postmodern, it's rife with action and discovery of new views of the world, which is apparently run by evil librarians who obfuscate the truth to keep the people under their control. (I'll never tell if that is true or not.)

But whatever the case, it is an fun, fast-paced, and quite enjoyable read, and one I can see recommending especially to a boy who is ready to move into chapters in terms of reading level, but reluctant to move into heavier books. One who loved Jon Sceisczka or Dav Pilkey would be a perfect bet.

Labels: 2007, action/adventure, good stuff, humour, middle grades, slightly weird stuff, witches and wizards