pirates! celia rees

one from my own personal amelia bloomer project list–

during an eye-opening move to her family’s slave-run plantation in jamaica, nancy finds out her family has betrothed her to a creepy brazilian more than twice her age. hoping to instead marry her childhood sweetheart, she and minerva, her slave/best friend join a band of borderline well-behaved pirates for a swashbuckling adventure on the high seas, with the creepy brazilian hot on the trail.

you don’t run across adventure books of this caliber for teen girls very often. i love this book and everything it stands for. 5 stars!

best thing ever: amelia bloomer project

i can’t believe i didn’t know about this before– i love it!

The Amelia Bloomer list “includes books challenging the young women of today to take a new look at what it means to be feminist, showcasing who fought for our rights. These books bring to light the stories of women who break boundaries, from civil war doctors and journalists covering WWII to graffiti artists and girls demanding to be accepted for who they are. The 32 books on the 2008 Amelia Bloomer Project list encourage and inspire girls to be smart, brave, and proud.”

“evolution, me & other freaks of nature” (see last post) is on this year’s list for young adult fiction. hooray!

i’d love to see more graphic novels/manga/comics included. the more i read, the more titles i discover that really need to overhaul their concept of gender. this scintillating blog thinks so too:

Girls read comic and they’re pissed

evolution, me & other freaks of nature- robin brande

the curtain opens on our fair heroine, mena, as she begins her first day at a public high school. she once had many a chum at her church’s youth group, but she has been ousted due to an un-foreclosed scandal, and now they slam her into the wall as they pass merrily by, filled with the love of christ. (i went to a christian high school so i’m allowed to say things like that.) the only bright spot in mena’s day is biology class, where ms. shepherd reigns with scientific brilliance and her lab partner, casey, is the best kind of geek (ie cute). But when ms. shepherd begins the unit on evolution, the Youth Group causes a ruckus and mena is torn between how she’s been raised and what she knows to be true.

i loved the story, especially watching mena…well, evolve. (i get symbolism!) religious people may feel troubled by the way 97% of the christians in this book are portrayed…but i have an eerie feeling that brande researched these characters in my hometown and didn’t even have to embellish anything. i shall say no more.

except that i listened to the audio version of this book and thought the reader was perfect. really, really well done.

reference rollcall: weirdo week edition

for some reason last week was weirdo week at the library. the most exciting moment was when i got into a heated discussion with a patron about whether or not it’s okay to call teenagers racial slurs and tell them that their parents are failures for letting them run wild in the library. (um…it’s not okay.) but aside from that–

-”how do i get out of here?!” this from a haried looking man who had come downstairs to the children’s room looking to exit the library.

-someone called looking for the cell phone number of a woman she thinks might live in new york city. sorry, even i am not that good.

-”which harry potter comes first?” i told her. “but how do you KNOW that’s the first one?”

-”i’m looking for this alphabet book that i checked out for my kids a few years ago. i don’t remember the name or author, but i know that V was for violet.” we have a list of alphabet books, actually, so we looked through all the ones that were checked in to see if V was for violet. we did not find it.

-”I need eat pray love for my book club tomorrow. what, there’s 56 holds? Seriously? but i need it for BOOK CLUB. gee, I didn’t know it was that popular.” (short rant: what IS it with women in book clubs waiting until the day before to request a copy of a NYT bestseller and then getting pissed at me because we don’t have a special secret cupboard full of their book club selections that we were saving for just as long as they needed to remember that they are, in fact, in a book club, and it is, in fact, meeting tomorrow, and that they can’t skip because otherwise tammy will get to pick the book again even though it is NOT HER TURN? lady, if you do this to me again i will find tammy and tell her that you asked me to print out an internet synopsis of eat pray love because you are too cheap to buy the book.)

chanda’s secrets- allan stratton

in a fictional african country, people are dropping dead right left and center. one was chanda’s step-father. then her best friends’ parents. then her little sister. then her NEW step-father. but the families always cover up the truth, saying cancer or tuberculosis, when they actually mean AIDS. now chanda’s mom is sick, but if chanda tells the truth she won’t be able to get help for her.

certainly a heart-wrenching and gripping tale, one which sheds much-needed light on why AIDS is spreading so rampantly in some areas of the world…so forgive me if i say that chanda is a little…boring? she mentions wanting to get a scholarship to college so she can grow up and be an important career-person, but mostly she runs around taking care of everyone and being a brave little toaster and eventually has to neglect her schoolwork. and does she complain? noooo. i like my heroines a little more disobedient and lively. but still…read this if you’re in the mood for a weepie funk.

kara0ke revolution & making felt stuff

i’m a little behind. this blogging business is hard work sometimes.

so, last saturday i headed out to new library job to do some more orientation and also play videogames with the teens. the young adults. the adolescents. lately i have been having issues saying the word “teen.” it just sounds so…blech. pretty bad news considering it’s the first word in my job title. if i think of anything better i’ll let you know.

handwarmers

(from l-r) me, ms. s, & seester rae. because i was trying to think up some last minute christmas gifts that i could embroider in front of ugly betty, but without having to leave the house and go buy any supplies. when i get tired of my clothes, i often hack the sleeves off shirts to explore different lengths, so i had a bunch of orphan sleeves, and learned a few new edging stitches, and voila! warm hands, free fingers. easy-peasy.

the luxe- anna godbersen

so many love triangles in this turn-of-the-century society manhattan drama. godbersen opens with an edith wharton quote which prepared me for some satirical fun, but alas, i did not leak a chortle within all 433 pages. is the opening quote why people are comparing this to wharton? because aside from the setting they have nothing in common. so cut it out. thank you. love, krick.

the writing was spot-on for the story, which is about rich teenagers falling in love and sneaking around and plotting and scheming. that is all i will say plot-wise because i’m guessing that either sounds good, or it doesn’t. i liked it but did not love it. however, the ending, though a little predictable, definitely has me looking forward to the sequel. swoon.

retroblog 9.10.02

lalalalalalalala…today i had a deskie meeting. it was crazy boring. then i drank some tea and dropped a plant.

a word of advice….

if your roommate’s boyfriend is supposed to call, and you want to answer the phone in a ridiculous way to freak him out, DO make sure that, when the phone rings, it is indeed your roommate’s boyfriend. and not her father.

today we are creepy: “bum bum bum bum bum bum-bum” (creepiest noise EVER when i do it right). or when pix says “i have no blood” in her creepy voice, it is SO great!

this written by someone who should be reading beowulf but instead is trying out-creepy her roommate. ba haaa.