Review: Bomb: the Race to Build–and Steal–the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon

Bomb: The Race to Build–and Steal–the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon, by Steve Sheinkin, is part spy thriller, part war story, part character study, and part Scientific American. It’s about scientific discovery, heroism, ingenuity, responsibility, secrecy, treason, and irrevocable decisions. Most sobering of all, it is completely true and it is still relevant today.

The bomb in question is the atomic bomb. Whoever wields it controls the outcome of both World War II and the post-atomic future. Germany has the advantage from the start; fission, the concept behind unleashing the atom’s power, was discovered in Berlin in 1938, and after Germany’s invasion of most of Europe, the Nazis controlled production of crucial bomb making materials such as uranium and heavy water. US strategy involved secretly inviting the world’s best scientists to the remote location of Los Alamos, where they worked under the leadership of theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union is so far behind both countries in their nuclear research that it would be faster to develop a bomb through espionage. And that’s precisely what the KGB does.

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Christmas/Holiday Book Gifting List: 2012

Basically, a year-end roundup of our favorite books from 2012. Any of these titles would make an entertaining and enriching gift, whether it’s for the holidays or just because you are the definition of awesome and enjoy gifting books.

Picture Book 

What’s great about Extra Yarn is that while everyone has a different opinion on the story’s takeaway message, they’re all absolutely right. Also wonderful are illustrator Jon Klassen’s quirky pictures of a boring gray town bursting into variegated color as a result of Annabelle’s knitting, particularly when it’s worn by Klassen’s recurring Hat animals. Finally, this story celebrates yarn bombing. What’s not to like?

Middle Grade

We can totally see Liar and Spy or In a Glass Grimmly winning accolades in the coming year. Other standouts include The Secret of the Fortune Wookie and The One and Only Ivan.  However, if you’re looking for that (elusive) distinguished book starring a female protagonist, look no further than Earwig and the Witch for some wonderfully ordinary magic.

YA fiction

It pleases us to proclaim what a good year 2012 has been for YA. On the top of our list is the not-very-festive but absolutely gripping Code Name Verity, which features a fantastic friendship between two very different young women. Also in the depressing but good category are The Wicked and the Just and The Drowned Cities (the prequel/companion novel to Ship Breaker.)  Alternatively, if you’re looking for something more upbeat, we recommend Team Human, which cheekily references the vampire genre yet has fully-fleshed characters (human and otherwise) and a story line that stands on its own.

Bonus

For those who enjoy book sets, the third and final installment of The Montmaray Journals was published this year. Like the previous two books chronicling the plight of the noble (literally) but penniless FitzOsbornes through WWII, The FitzOsbornes at War is a wonderful mix of frothy and serious drama.

We’ve shared our favorites. What are your recommendations for 2012? 

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Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm

Review: Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm by Philip Pullman (Nov. 2012)

After reading a slew of books I simply couldn’t put down—The FitzOsbornes at War, In a Glass Grimmly, Son—it was a nice change of pace to find Philip Pullman’s fairy tale collection. I like fairy tales just fine, but they’re best taken in small doses. After a while, all those stock characters and random rescues by angels/mysterious men in the woods/wild critters start to get boring. It’s the ideal book for reading in bits and pieces, and now that I’m done, I find myself with a new appreciation for the Grimm collection.

Pullman’s retelling isn’t nearly as dramatic as, say, Adam Gidwitz’s snarky retakes. What Pullman did was pick dozens of Grimm fairy tales and streamline the narration, tossing out anything that would make them drag. His intent, as he writes in the introduction, was to “produce a version that was as clear as water.” I felt like I was reading something I’d half-forgotten, and rediscovering what makes fairy tales timeless. Some of the stories are well known: Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin, Little Red Riding Hood. Then there were others I’d never heard of before: The Juniper Tree, The Three Snake Leaves, The Fisherman and His Wife. But they all felt familiar, because they all have classic fairy tale elements, like the repetition of things in threes (something I seem to be doing a lot in this post), or magical animals with the power to grant wishes.

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Pet Peeves on the Loose

They may induce sighs or eye-rolling.  More serious offenders may cause erratic page flipping or even book slamming. Surely you have come across them: the terrible horrible no good very bad pet peeves. We’ve recounted our top five for your viewing displeasure.

1. Orphans attached to prophecies. Harry Potter is the obvious example. Lyra and the Pevensies count, too.

Comment: Can’t orphans have character arcs without “fate” aka author hand waving to explain everything?

2. Precocious kids, idiotic adults. How does a society where all the adults are less intelligent and less capable than their progeny function at all?  A Series of Unfortunate Events comes to mind.

3. When authors think their main characters are more amazing than they actually are. Obviously this is subjective, so we won’t give examples.

Comment: Let readers determine whether they like a character or not. Don’t hit us over the head with a character’s amazing perfection.

4. A corollary of Pet Peeve #3. When characters are perfect, except for one teensy-weensy “flaw,” like being too noble, stubborn, or self-sacrificing. And there are no long term consequences to possessing this “flaw.” Basically, everyone Finnikin looks up to and tries to emulate. Mary Poppins counts, too, but at least we weren’t supposed to be invested in her.

5. Long fantasy names with a string of apostrophes and rarely used letters of the alphabet, like x, v, k and z.

See Prince Balthazar and Trevanion from Finnikin of the Rock and the Ra’zac and Queen Islanzadi from Eragon for a phonetic headache.

What about you? Feel free to gripe about your kidlit pet peeves in the comments below. Or email us at readsforkeeps@gmail.com. We’ll feature your pet peeves in a future post. 

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Chinese makes everything better…是嗎?

So, I went to the bookstore in Taiwan and, being curious at how the translations from English to Chinese would be handled, started going through the shelves like crazy. Here are some titles that caught my eye:

Picture Books

Blackout and A Ball for Daisy are translated literally, while Grandpa Green has become “The Garden Remembers Everything.”

Verdict: It makes sense not to translate Grandpa Green directly. Something like this (阿公的公園 aka Grandpa’s Garden) would have been cute, too, if just for the repetition. (I took the liberty of using 公園, which means park, rather than 花園, which means garden.)

Middle Grade

I am the Cheese, Tuck Everlasting, and King of the Wind are direct translations. However, My Louisiana Sky (which I’ve yet to read) has become “Clear Days Between People,” and When You Reach Me is poetically, “Reaching Through Time and Space to Find You.”

Verdict: All these titles sound pretty good to me in Chinese (in terms of rhythm and phrasing), except I am the Cheese, which sounds funny in any language, but especially in Chinese, because there isn’t a culture built around cheese. The translators should have re-titled that one. The Chinese version of When You Reach Me is very appropriately re-titled, and now I want to read My Louisiana Sky to see how those “clear days” factor in.

YA

YA isn’t my forte, although this has been a year of good YA reading for me. Still, I didn’t realize Snow White and the Huntsman was a book before it became a movie, but it and Daughter of Smoke and Bone are translated literally, down to the precise order of “smoke” and “bone.” Between Shades of Gray is now “Area of Grays.” And I don’t recognized the book on the bottom left, but it’s been translated to either “Life” or “Fate.” Speaking of life, it would have been fun to see Life: An Exploded Diagram, just to see how it would be translated.

Verdict: I’m just surprised and thrilled to see Gray and Smoke and Bone there at all! I know these are hits, but they’re not blockbusters, so I didn’t expect them to get this kind of attention.

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Easier Said Than Done

Disclaimer: This ARC was given at the Penguin preview during KidlitCon 2012. (Publication date: Feb. 13, 2013).

Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys in ARC form is like getting to skip the line at an amusement park when the line is five months long. So even though the marshmallow test suggests that good things come to those who can wait, I devoured the book the moment it reached my hands.

Although it might be bad form to compare Out of the Easy with Between Shades of Gray, I was astounded by the similarities between the two, so I’ll just get the inevitable comparisons out of my system before I buckle down and review Easy on its own merit:

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Covershoot: The Thief

Time for another cover recreation…this one was easy: The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner.

What I used: old competition medal, blue clay, plastic bead and string.

Original cover

Let us know if you have ideas for future covershoots. Some books are more feasible than others (ie Everything On a Waffle in all its flying food glory would be difficult), but we will try our best.

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Review: The Raven Boys

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater (pub. Sept. 2012. Book One of the Raven Cycle)

As someone who never finished The Scorpio Races, I was a bit nervous about reading The Raven Boys. The book’s premise (psychics and magic-seeking teens), not to mention the opening sentence (Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she’d been told that she would kill her true love.) promised enough clichés to send me running for cover. Lucky for me, Stiefvater upends expectations by prioritizing human characters before the paranormal and keeping the relationship angst to a minimum. In fact, the book is surprisingly mundane (in a good way) for a story about five teenagers seeking the tomb of an ancient king.

Blue Sargent is the only normal person in a family of psychics. While her mother and aunts work in the predictions business, Blue spends her time on the practical side of life—like holding down multiple after-school jobs, and dreaming of a future far from Henrietta, Virginia. She avoids boys on principle (the better to dodge the kiss-and-murder prediction), until she befriends four prep school boys who are searching for the resting place of Glendower, an ancient Welsh king (Virginia and Wales are connected magical ley lines—it’s a long story). Legend says the king lies asleep, not dead, and the first to wake him will be granted a king’s favor. This backstory is vaguely interesting. What really matters is why the boys have spent years on this quest, and why Blue wants to help. Gansey, Adam, Ronan and Noah seem like typical spoiled teens fueled by angst and reckless abandon, but they’re also driven by serious reasons, whether it’s Gansey trying to make something of himself, Adam’s desperate need for independence, or Ronan and Noah’s loyalty to their friends. The quest gives them something to hold on to, even as the rest of their lives are falling apart (school expulsion, drunkeness, family feuds). Stiefvater spends most of the book on their day-to-day struggles, and she’s defined them so well that I wouldn’t have cared if they were searching for leprechauns or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Like they say about the best of adventures, the journey is a lot more interesting than the destination.

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Books on Stage

The good news: The Book Thief, one of my favorite books (despite its depressing-ness), is now a play.

The bad news: it’s playing in Chicago. Sans TARDIS, I can only hope it’s coming soon to Boston.

And speaking of books made into plays…did you know that Number the Stars is now a musical? Seriously. I can’t imagine any of those characters bursting into song, but maybe it’s less weird when they’re all singing together.

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KidLitCon 2012 Recap

                        Patience, one of the stone lions guarding the NYPL,

                       where KidLitCon was held. Photo by Sondy Eklund.

Jen: a first-timer’s thoughts of kidlitcon

• wear comfortable shoes
• bring business cards. or knitting. Both will help you make connections with other bloggers.
• do start your day with a large, sturdy and most importantly, empty, tote bag. It will most certainly be full to bursting with new ARCs by the end of the day
• if you have traveled from afar, swing by the post office to mail your ARCs. Flat rate shipping is great.
• or, hawk them to a blogger who is willing to love them more and, more importantly, will carry them home.
• don’t feel overwhelmed by all the bloggers who are way more prolific reviewers and well-read than you. They possess a wealth of information and are incredibly witty and nice about sharing it.
• thanks to Maureen Johnson, I’ll probably think of insecure authors every time “werewolf cages” are mentioned in conversation
• after the panel Critical Reviewing and “Niceness,” I am itching to write a review that’s more critical and not merely nice. At the same time, I can only say what worked for me, what didn’t, and why.

Lisa:

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