Kimchi &Calamari by Rose Kent

For most of us in school, we can look back at one particular assignment that a teacher gave and remember the stress that surrounded its completion. For Joesph Calderaro it is the 1500 word family heritage paper assigned by his social studies teacher at the end of his 8th grade year. The real issue for Joseph is that he is adopted, so he doesn't really know his heritage. While Korean on the outside, he has been raise in an Italian home. But it is this paper forces him to take closer look at what family really means. In the end, he comes to the conclusion that he is an ethnic sandwich.

What is so great about this book is that it is filled with the everyday challenges of being a middle school: wanting to ask the cool popular girl to the Final Farewell dance; trying to distance yourself from your parents; being embarrassed by your family; hanging out with your friends; trying to impress everyone that you come into contact with... yet Joseph does it in a honest and entertaining way. You can't help but, laugh and think... "Yeah, I've been there." Because even if you aren't adopted, middle school is still the time when you being to really get to know yourself, and so ultimately we all face the same challenges as Joseph just in slightly different ways.

Something else that impresses me about the book is that while Joseph is going through his own struggle of finding himself; it is parrelled by the journey is dad is taking. His dad loves books and reading, yet finds himself in a job that he has done out of duty. The side plot of his dad finally deciding that he needed a change and goes back to school is just as important as the what Joseph goes through.

Warning: you will get hungry reading this book. The author fills the book with great imagery and a lot of food figurative language.

"The world is your supersized soda waiting to be guzzled, right?" (1)
"Rain sprinkled on my face like salt on french fries." (40)
"... my backpack was soaked and my hair looked like black spaghetti." (41)
" The air felt soupy as I ran up the driveway after school." (194)

There are other fabulous English elements. Joseph as a reoccuring dream. There are quotes from literature. Tons of smilies and metaphors, and even some well placed alliteration. As a former English teacher, I love it. While I think that the cover of the book targets a female audience, I think with male narrator makes it a little more readable for a middle school guy. It would be a great book to read aloud in a class.

This is Rose Kent's first novel. Have you read it? Please let us know what you think!

Wintergirls by Laure Halse Anderson

The book begins with Lia being greeted one morning with the news that her long-time friend Cassie was found dead in a hotel. What follows is Lia's struggle with anorexia. Her ability to control her eating, or lack of eating, in a world in which she has little control is emotional. Her mother is a busy doctor; her father a professor at the local university; her stepmother terribly unaware. It is this life filled with people that seem too busy to truly know Lia that first brings her and Cassie together in their attempt to be thin. They can control their weight, and in a way, control their parents. Now that Cassie is dead, Lia is haunted by her friend as she continues to fall deeper and deeper into a world with little food. She struggles to find out about Cassie's last moments to help put her ghost to rest, but what keeps you reading is to see if she is able to heal herself; whereas her friend did not.

A very dark and haunting novel to say the least. The images of the ghost of Cassie standing over Lia's bed floated through my mind as I fell asleep after reading it one night. Definitely different than anything else I have read by this author, but as expected, the narrator is believable due to great reflective thought and realistic dialogue. I couldn't put it down because I really didn't know if Lia was strong enough to admit that she had a problem and that she NEEDED help. It is really hard to do that and Anderson does a great job of developing that conflict.

Have you read this book or any of Laurie Halse Anderson's other books? Leave a comment!

Imperfections by Lynda Durrant

In 1862 Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, a teenager names Rosemary Elizabeth is left along with her brother and baby sister at a Shaker village. “Heaven on Earth.” While Rosemary Elizabeth (who comes to be renamed by the Shakers as Sister Bess) loves the beautiful clean surroundings, the delicious abundant food, the spotless white garments and the kindly companions, she finds daily difficulties with the Shaker three Cs — confession, communality, and celibacy — as well as so many additional non-sensical rules. Rosemary struggles to be good according to the ways of the Shakers, but can't help but see the hypocrisy in their lives. Slowly, she begins to rebel in small and large ways to define her own self and comes through her Shaker experience with wonderful balance. She is grateful to all that she has learned while living with the Shakers, but she feels that once the war is over, she will leave. She worries though as to if her mother will come back to get them, and if her siblings, who seem to be acclimating to Shaker life, will want to leave.

I enjoyed the main character of this book because of her thougthfulness and intelligence. I was also amazed at how much the can be learned about the Shakers from reading this book. Clearly this is a subject of interest tot he author and much more interesting to read than a textbook.

The reading level makes is fairly easy. Late elementary and up will enough this piece of historical fiction.

Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson

Hattie Here-and-There (real name is Hattie Brooks) has been pushed from distance relative to distance relative ever since her father and mother died when she was a child. After receiving a letter to prove up on her uncle's claim in Montana, she leaves Iowa, where she has been living as a charity case with her aunt and uncle, and heads west hoping to finally find what she has always been looking for... home.

While excited about her adventure, she soon learns that homesteading is a difficult life for everyone, but especially a 16 year old female without a family. She is befriend by the neighboring family that involves her in the politics of this small Montana town because the husband is German. Because the book is set during World War I, there are many additionally hardships that people of German descent faced. Hattie stands up for what she believes is right even if it means offending the most powerful landowners in the town.

The book is engaging and the narrative switches between her thoughts, her letters to her childhood friend/ love that is fight in Europe, and a to her uncle that is published as a column in an Iowa paper. This further makes it more interesting to read and the story moves quickly.

I will say that I thought the ending was rushed. Once everyone gets sick, what was taking her chapters to build up to all ended too fast for my taste. But perhaps if you like short books, you will be happy that she gets to the end so quickly. :) In addition to being a Newbery Honor book for 2007, this novel is also based on the author’s own family history; her great grandmother was the original Hattie who struck out on her own on the Montana prairie as a sixteen year old. I thought that was pretty cool. I love a good pioneer story. It took me back to Little House on the Prairie, but better.