Month: June 2005
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Plastic Angel by Nerissa NieldsOrchard, June 2005
(I read an advance copy of this several months ago, but didn’t want to write about it ’til it was actually out there to be read.) This book is really lovely, never strained or cheesy or simplistic or didactic or any of the bad things that young adult books can sometimes be. It’s filled with…
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The Misfits by James HoweAladdin, 2003 (originally 2001)
Sometimes this book is annoyingly meta-textual, like when the narrator refers to things that are going to happen, or calls other characters “characters,” but mostly it’s a quirky and cute story about a group of seventh-grade kids who are the class outcasts. I like how matter-of-factly everything is handled, how having divorced parents or a…
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Rainbow Boys by Alex SanchezSimon Pulse, 2003 (originally 2001)
Rainbow Boys is about being young and queer and confused: it’s the story of three high school guys in various stages of the process of coming out. Jason is the popular jock with a girlfriend, Kyle’s the quiet swimmer with a crush on Jason, and Nelson’s the flamboyant school fag who’s Kyle’s best friend, but…
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When a Woman Loves a Man by David LehmanScribner, 2005
Poems with forms, poems without forms, poems about love and music and literature and poetry. Sestinas, pantoums (a circle of a poem, ending with the opening line), an abecedarius or two, a villanelle made up entirely of anagrams of W.H. Auden’s full name. Many of these poems are funny; others are simply beautiful.
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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. RowlingScholastic, 2003
Oh, adolescent grumpiness & magic & adventure! I couldn’t put this book down (reading on the subway, despite its massive size) and now I’m all excited for the release of the next one.