Making a Plan and Checking It Twice

I need to replace my library picture as it is now a giant construction site as our town pulls it into conformity with 21st Century ideas of fashion, safety, and library configuration. The back-up library doesn't actually have any books, just a place for your holds to rest, and healthy as that might be for my normal over-indulgence, it just doesn't work for me.

So I've shifted to my primary back-up library, but the picture our county has for it is the dreamy mock-up they hope will replace THAT sometime next year. I may have to trundle about with a camera to document my library love. Renton Highlands still has books, although I stuck to my hold shelf. Well, I did search through all the tempting QuickPicks for anything set in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado or Connecticut, but came up empty.

Now that I have the idea of starting one book a day for the rest of the summer (as opposed to last year, where the goal was to FINISH a book each day) I have to figure out what I'm reading. And since I'm also doing the library-due-date dance, I have to make sure I finish some books on time. Of course, I'm unlikely to actually complete a book a day, especially with the stuff I have planned for next week, so it's a good thing I've replaced my dainty book bag with a sturdy, voluminous tote.

So this week I had some books planned out:

Monday: Derik's Bane
Tuesday: Mrs Pollifax and the Whirling Dervish
Wednesday: Prisoner B-3087
Thursday: Ouran High School Host Club 1

And I mostly kept to that, so that I could go the library and turn in all of those (well, not Derik's Bane, because that was an e-book and will just quietly go poof from my NOOK).  And then I went into the library and picked up a few books, which I will ignore and instead read:

Friday: Death's Daughter, Amber Benson. Vaginal Fantasy online book club pick. NOOK.
Saturday: Crown of Renewal, Elizabeth Moon. Because I like her stuff.
Sunday: Archangel's Storm, Nalini Singh. I skipped this and read the latest.
Monday: A Rising Thunder, David Weber. Because Weber is fun.
Tuesday: Yonder Comes the Other End of Time, Suzette Haden Elgin. This is from my TBR bookcase.
Wednesday: Theodosia and the Last Pharaoh, R.L. LaFevers. Finishing off this series.
Thursday: Skin Dive, Ava Gray. Another NOOK pick.

If somehow I don't need to start Skin Dive (I'm trying to limit myself to only a few open NOOK books at a time), I have The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay as a back-up.

What did I bring home? And wouldn't it be different if I caught up enough on my library pile that the books I was planning to read had some relation to the books I brought home with such eager anticipation? I should really try that sometime...


The Marrige Bureau for Rich People, Farahad Zama. This is our August book pick, so I don't want to read it for a few weeks.

Reading in the Wild, Donalyn Miller. How a teacher inspires kids to love reading. I'm not a teacher, but I like kids to love reading, and I also like book recommendations, so I'll probably enjoy this book. In my dream job I'd wander around schools and match kids to books.

A Web of Air, Philip Reeve. I liked the first book in this series, so I got the second. X has already read it and says it's good. I'll get to it in August sometime.

Divergent, Veronica Roth. Well, this was a surprise. I thought my spot on the holds list was about three weeks away. It's already been stolen by X anyway, but I'd better schedule it for next week sometime.

I also got two digital books sometime this week. I'll go sign in to Library Loot which is at Captive Reader this week to see what everyone else is getting.

Fireworks and Summer

Susie and Sophie want
good views of the fireworks

Another wonderful week of summer, with the boys enjoying their rowing camp, and tolerating the astronomy & story writing seminar that I signed them up for. Fourth of July was fun -- it's the first time in ages that I've been home for it (I miss you, Ellen!) so I don't really have any traditions. Since it fell on a Thursday, it was my turn to cook, so I dragged X out shopping with me and made some fun salads (sardine pasta & roasted potato). Then I served hot dogs and corn on the cob so as to satisfy patriotic requirements, with French croissants and ice cream for dessert. We ate outside as a picnic, which was much cooler than usual, since I was in Washington instead of Texas.

The city here bans all fireworks, so at 10pm I volunteered to take A & N to see the show over the lake, and I forced P to accompany us. We spread our blanket and chairs on the beach and enjoyed a nice display, close enough to see well but far enough away that no painfully loud music assaulted us. I offered to sing patriotic songs to the kids, but they all demurred. 

I'm still hitting my book a day, although counting the picture books seems like cheating. And so far they are almost all library books, because that's what I'm drowning in.

June 21: Lord Peter Views the Body, Dorothy Sayers (audio), library

June 22: Mrs. Harkness and the Panda, Alicia Potter, (PB), library

June 23:  Smells Like Dog, Suzanne Selfors, (kidlit), library

June 24: Eggs 1 2 3 Who Will the Babies Be, Janet Halfman,

June 25: Looking at Lincoln, Maira Kalman,

June 26: Blue Jasmine, Kashmira Sheth

June 27:The Worst Case Scenario: Deadly Seas, David Borgenicht & Alexander Lurie

June 28: The Guardian (The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier), Jack Campbell

June 29: Last Scene Alive, Charlaine Harris, (mystery), reread

June 30: Dead Over Heels, Charlaine Harris, (mystery), reread

July 1: Mirage, Matt Ruff, (SF), library

July 2: Fire Lord's Lover,  Kathryn Kennedy (SF, Romance), library

July 3: The Giant Ball of String, Arthur Geisert (PB), library

July 4: Four Corners, Kira Salek, (memoir), library

Summer Reading Book a Day

The summer has finally kicked into hot gear, after a week of cool showers and even some thunderstorms. Today the sun unleashed some heat, enough that I consoled myself that I have an air conditioner. I didn't actually turn it on, but knowing I could was a great relief. I'm enjoying the company of my new high school student, whose picture is my theme for this week. As you can see, he's removed his tie, unbuttened the top layers, and generally relaxed after the Big Junior High Transition Ceremony.

I've stored up a few books in advance by reading the Cybils Nonfiction picture books. I'll have to reread them again with N; he's really stretching his literary skills and seems to like the science stuff. Then I concentrate on the library stuff that's about to expire; I haven't even touched my groaning book case of unread volumes. Oh well, July awaits.

The books so far are:

June 21: Lord Peter Views the Body, Dorothy Sayers (audio), library

June 22: Mrs. Harkness and the Panda, Alicia Potter, (PB), library

June 23:  Smells Like Dog, Suzanne Selfors, (kidlit), library

June 24: Eggs 1 2 3 Who Will the Babies Be,  Janet Halfman, (PB), library

June 25: Looking at Lincoln, Maira Kalman, (PB), library

June 26: Blue Jasmine, Kashmira Sheth, (kidlit), library

June 27:The Worst Case Scenario: Deadly Seas, David Borgenicht & Alexander Lurie, (kidlit), library

June 28: The Guardian (The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier), Jack Campbell, SF, library

Summer of 2013

Solstice Wear

It's summer time again, and I'm belatedly announcing I'm going for the Book-a-Day-thing a lot of librarians sign up for. It's very relaxed, which is good, because I'm bone idol. I'll again try to get through a lot of the books piling up on my TBR bookcase, as well as whittle my library stash down. Of course, I'm also taking a giant exciting vacation in the middle of July, so we'll see how that works out.

It's based on an average, so you can read three books one day and then sleep for 48 hours. Everything counts, even picture books, which is handy since I just finished off the Cybils Nonfiction Picture books. I hope they help me out on the driving days.

This week kicks off the Summer Solstice (June 21st), so the books so far are:

June 21: Lord Peter Views the Body, Dorothy Sayers (audio), library
June 22: Mrs. Harkness and the Panda, Alicia Potter, (PB), library
June 23:  Smells Like Dog, Suzanne Selfors, (kidlit), library

What I Read On My Summer Vacation

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Apparently, if I skip one day, then I skip them all. And then I stop posting altogether.

I did manage to start a book a day during my summer vacation, but I didn't finish them all. Actually, I probably did finish a book a day, but since I also kept reading other things, they weren't all from my unread bookcase. And often I finished late enough that I didn't take extra time to post.

But I do like my little blog, so I'm going to try to start updating again. To clear my head, I'm starting off with all the summer books I read without telling the world:

• North Winds Blow Free, Elizabeth Howard.
• Fossil Identifier, S. Weidensaul.
• Penny Goes to Camp, C. Haywood.
• The Other Side of Truth, Beverley Naidoo.
• Dr. Dolittle's Zoo, Hugh Lofting.
• Farewell To Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston.
• The Trouble With Magic, Ruth Chew
• Friends Around the World, Clara Baker.
• Return From Witch Mountain, Alexander Key
• Black and Blue Magic, Zilpha Keatley Snyder.
• The Best Halloween Ever, Barbara Robinson.
• Ellen Tibbitts, Beverly Cleary.
• Magic Tree Hous Fact Tracker #1: Dinosaurs, Will Osborne.
• The Clue of the Dancing Puppet, Carolyn Keene.
• Lawn Boy Returns, Gary Paulsen.
• The Dragon of Lonely Island, Rebecca Rupp.
• Sideways Arithmetic From Wayside School, Louis Sachar.
• The Ghost Belonged to Me, Richard Peck.
• Three Stuffed Owls, Keith Robertson.
• Esperanza Rising, Pam Munoz Ryan.
• The Cow-Tail Switch, Harold Courlander.
• Turn Homeward, Hannalee, Patricia Beatty.
• United Tates of America, Paula Danzinger.
• Taken At the Flood, Ken Catran.
• The Woodshed Mystery, Gertrude Warner.

The books I started but haven't actually finished yet are:

• Tales From Silver Lands, Charles Finger
• Pinky Pye, Eleanor Estes.
• Rufus M., Eleanor Estes.
• The Tunnel of Hugsy Good, Eleanor Estes.
• Ecstasia, Francesca Lia Block.
• Bob, Son of Battle, Alfred Ollivant.
• Tricksters, Margaret Mahy.
• Tessie, Jesse Jackson.
• Puddleby Adventures, Hugh Lofting.
• The Avion My Uncle Flew, Cyrus Fisher.
• The Eye of the Warlock, P.W. Catanese.
• Redskin and Cowboy, G. A. Henty.

Award Winner: Parrot in the Oven

Well, I've officially fallen behind in my summer goal; I decided to get to sleep at a reasonable time and then I spent a day driving and didn't finish my assigned book.

I did read some library books that were falling due, but that doesn't count. Phooey. I still hope to catch up this week, and then we'll keep trying.  Today I finished Parrot in the Oven by Victor Martinez, a novel in short stories about a boy growing up in a Mexican American family, struggling with academic ambitions that are left unsupported by his school and peers, an alcoholic father and a generally abusive family, a peer group that values fighting and theft, and the general prejudice of whites against anyone brown or black.

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Martinez's stories have a delicate flavor to them, wrapping the feelings and senses of the moment carefully up and then leaving quietly so the reader is left alone with the emotions. It was a powerful book that I didn't manage to read quickly enough on the drive home.

Sea Magic: The Changeling Sea

Patricia McKillip's books always deliver a combination of magic and emotional truth. This means that I'm not always in the mood to pick them up, since emotions are heavy things, and occasionally she doesn't get the balance just right. The cover of The Changeling Sea also deterred me; it looked like a book about a child and her mentor, and I just never had the urge to start that story. So although I clearly bought this book back in California (it's a discard from the San Mateo County Library, one of a half-dozen libraries I frequented when I lived near San Francisco), I hadn't read it until today.

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I also took a bit of a chance, leaving this book until the end of the day so that I read it straight through, instead of putting it down when things got tough, my usual cowardly approach. But it paid off; the story wove magic and love and loss together in a lovely enchantment, much as the sea turned Peri's angry hexes into webs of moonlight and beauty. Despite the cover, the protagonist was a young woman, not a child, who starts off struggling with multiple losses, including a mother who retreats from the sadness of the world. As Peri emerges from her grief we also enter into a world of magic and loss and longing, and she encounters love and friendship and greed and danger.

And, just as in McKinley's The Hero and the Crown, she doesn't insist on limiting herself to a single lover; life has tides and changes, and your heart can weather them. It's a wonderful read, although not the one promised by the cover on my copy. (The cover shown isn't the one I got; it's actually a lot more representative.)

I'll leave this around for the boys, although it doesn't really hit any of their obvious buttons.

Interesting History: Dragonwings

Dragonwings is another book that I might have read as a kid, but I'm glad to have it on my shelves. It's also possible that I just read about it, since the plot seemed familiar but I didn't recognize the tone. Laurence Yep's book imagines what it might have been like to be a Chinese immigrant building an airplane in the early 1900's in San Francisco.

The story is told through the memories of Moon Shadow, a young boy sent out to live with his father, the aviator. Although Yep admits in the author note at the back that he made up most of the story, the core element is probably true, and mainly he succeeds in his attempt to make the lives of the Chinese community into a vibrant story. I really liked the voice of the narrator and found all the characters sturdy and believable, from Uncle to Mrs. Whitlaw.

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It also gave a vivid depiction of the San Francisco earthquake and its aftermath, which I liked and which will help me keep the details straight. I do like getting my history from historical fiction, especially when I trust the author to keep the details straight while placing his believable characters into realistic situations.

I'll leave this around for the boys, although it doesn't really hit any of their obvious buttons.

Fun: I Was a Rat!

Philip Pullman's books for YA readers leave me a bit cold; I never quite trust Pullman to give me a happy ending, which I'm a bit addicted to. I do trust him to give me a true ending, which is even more important, but I'm not always in the mood for the harsher kinds of true.

So I've always kind of avoided his younger books as well, and this summer I'm finding out that I've been depriving myself of some really fun reads. I Was a Rat! has been hanging around my house for years and years, and I've always avoided it because I thought it was a sociological look at poor orphans or something, when really it's a glance at what happens after Cinderella's ball, if one of the transformed rats misses the return trip and stays stuck as a boy.

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And yes, Pullman lets all sorts of rotten things happen to the boy, but he also provides him with a family, so we know that somehow everything will turn out all right. I had a lot of fun with the book, and now I hope I've buried some more of his works on my TBR shelf to be discovered this summer. And I've handed the book over to my sons with a recommendation; maybe we'll make it a book club book.

Short Take: Freddy and the Baseball Team

Ugh -- my mouse is misbehaving, and just now it selected most of the post and deleted it. I had just written about why Walter R. Brooks' Freddy and the Baseball Team From Mars didn't work for me.
Now I'll just say that it didn't and mostly leave it at that, with the last three sentences that justify my call:

But somehow it just didn't click for me. I found the mystery too obvious and the jokes too telegraphed, and I guess I was just generally too cynical to appreciate it. Thirty years ago would have been a better time to pick this up.

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Kids and Parents: Moonlight Man

Somehow I ended up today with another Paula Fox book. It's funny how I went years without reading any of her books, and this week I reread one and tried out a new one, The Moonlight Man. I've owned if for years and years (decades?) but the topic of a teenage girl learning to deal with her divorced and possibly alcoholic father didn't encourage me to pick it up, maybe because my parents divorced and then so did I, and I shy away from obvious bibliotherapy books.

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It's just as well I waited; I don't think I would have enjoyed it at an age it would have aimed at me. Fox writes a slow investigation of Catherine's growing maturity and understanding of her father; this is the summer that she actual starts to understand him, but she is also learning about herself. Some things do happen, as her father alternately charms her with his refreshing and challenging outlook on life and repels her with his dips into binge drinking, but mostly the book is spent inside Catherine's head, watching as she makes connections and learns about people and their complex emotions, including her own.

I'll leave it out, but I can't honestly say I think my thirteen year old would like this. He does surprise me sometimes, though.

Super Short: Meet Samantha

I knew I was going to spend most of today driving around in my car, which meant precious little time for reading, so I carefully saved a skinny little book from my shelves for this day. The American Girl series of books sound like an awful idea -- there is an expensive doll designed, complete with expensive accessories, clothes, and whatnot, and each doll gets a series of books about that girl's life.

However, the books are actually quite decent early readers. Meet Samantha by Susan S. Adler follows the story of a rich orphan living with her grandmother and a bunch of servants. She's friends with the cook, the seamstress, and the naughty boy next door, and struggles to live up to her grandmother's standards of behavior and proficiency in womanly arts like sewing and music. See how we've just learned what family life was like among the elite in the early 1900's? Samantha then befriends the young girl working next door, so we find out what life was like for the less wealthy, and then she sneaks out to visit her seamstress at home, so we also find out how things were different for African Americans.

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Although the writing clearly follows a plan, the words themselves are friendly and flow easily, without condescension or an overly didactic feel. As an adult, I do have a constant sense of "I see what you've done here" but I bet kids would enjoy it as a read aloud or an easy chapter book.

Relaxed Fairyland: Emerald City of Oz

I found my book bag, but too late to finish the library book. (It was a biography of Willie Mays, too detailed to hold my interest.) But now I have a half-finished book from my shelves to hold in reserve, in case I ever have problems finishing my book-a-day goal.

Today I read another fast book -- L. Frank Baum's Emerald City of Oz. I can't remember if I've read it before; I read a lot of them but they tend to mix together. It's possible this is my first read; I noticed when Dorothy's Uncle Henry and Aunt Em started appearing in the background but I think I always wondered how they got there, and the answer is in this book.

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I had fun with it -- both the chapters where Dorothy wanders around Oz with her guardians and some assorted Ozians and find silly villages (Bunville, where everybody and their stuff is made of pastry, and Bunnyville, a land of white rabbits) and then dark subplot with the evil Nomes gathering even eviler allies in hopes of enslaving everyone in Oz. But I liked Ozma's attitude towards them -- watch them approach even when it's boring, and then figure everything will be OK. Which it is. Mari Ness has done an extended series of reviews of Oz books on tor.com; Ness was much more bothered by Ozma's insouciance in the face of desperate danger and defilement. I had confidence in the queen, though.

Happy Telepathic Kids: The Magic Meadow

I seem to have misplaced my bag of books, which is a shame because it not only holds the book I was supposed to finish today, but also the almost-due library book and my NOOK. I'm hoping I left it somewhere obvious like my couch and it just temporarily turned invisible, and that I didn't leave it anywhere annoying like at the IHOP where I fed the kids. Anyway, at 10:00 PM I grabbed the next book on my shelf and spent an pleasant hour reading through Alexander Key's The Magic Meadow.

Like most of Key's works, this involves kindly paranormal kids at the intersection of our grungy, greedy, grasping world and a more highly evolved culture that involves loving nature and abstaining from money. Oh, and singing to the dawn in antigravity boats. These kids are trapped in the "orphaned cripples" ward of a condemned hospital, and they have only each other and the kindly night nurse. To amuse themselves, they imagine better places to be, and in the first pages main character Brick discovers the ability to will himself to one of those places, and the kids frantically race to get there before disaster strikes back at their lonely ward.

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I liked how no one worried about how the kids get their powers; they just practice until they can do things, and they have plenty of time since all they do is languish in the ward. They can all listen in to the thoughts around them in the hospital, although it's usually too depression to bear. And getting to the magic place they visualized is all they really need to get better -- immediately their toes start wiggling and they all begin walking. I never really worried that things wouldn't work out, so I liked the escalating tensions, both the immediate problem of escaping the hospital and then the slower issue of eating once they get to the Better Place.

Grim Stuff: Slave Dancer

Paula Fox's Slave Dancer is a book I read as a child and thought was good work but deeply sad, so I had no desire to reread it. But I did want to OWN it, so I bought a copy, and I'm uncomfortable with books I haven't actually read. I mean, what if all the pages got put in backwards or something? So it languished on my shelves until this summer reading thing bubbled it forth.

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My memories are quite accurate -- it's a good book, and very sad. Jesse provides a manageable glimpse at the horrendous and horrific world of slave trading, with men twisted by the cruelty they inflict in their search of profit. My memory of the plot was vague -- Jesse is kidnapped onto a slave ship, he witnesses the torture forced on the Africans by the evil captain and his twisted crew, and everyone but Jesse dies in a shipwreck. Turns out that I had forgotten one other survivor, which is an interesting note about what I tend to cling to.

I'll tell my eight grader that it's a good book, but I'm not sure he's that into historical fiction.

More Mythology: Temping Fate

I was actually on a Foolscap panel with Esther Friesner a few years ago, so I made a point of buying Temping Fate from the dealer's room. Of course, I usually come home with a pile of books from Foolscap, so this one ended up piled in the TBR bookcase until today.

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It's a fun book about people with strange names (Ilana, Dyrrin) interacting with modern versions of ancient gods, mostly Greek through a summer temporary work agency designed to let the deities get a bit of a break. Ilana, who gets a confusingly interesting back story, lands this summer job and wavers between enjoying the high wages and backing away from the magic and danger involved, while fending off the insanity of her sister's extreme wedding plans.

Anticlimatic Flaming Geyser

I didn't finish until late, since we went out to Flaming Geyser state park to celebrate my Discovery Pass. We tracked down the Anticlimactic Flaming Geyser (as the local rangers named it) but read up on its glory days a before my birth when it leaped up much higher. Not content with this, we then went to the local water park for the evening to hit the water. Well, I didn't get far enough in the book to do the laps I actually contemplated, because I had the pleasure of hanging out and talking with my son for a while. I will definitely give this book to my eight grader though; he lives urban fantasy and Greek mythology.

Corn Rows: The Greek Gods

I was supposed to read The Slave Dancer today, but I put it down somewhere and the house ate it. I hope it turns up again fairly soon. Anyway, when I finally gave up on finding it on time I grabbed the next skinny book, which was The Greek Gods by Bernard Evslin, Dorothy Evslin, and Ned Hoopes, which was about what you expect from the title.

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I did enjoy these versions, which gave a bit more time to the diverse emotions and needs of the gods, so that Persephone, for example, enjoys the power she has over Hades even as she misses her mom, and she eats the pomegranate seeds through the temptation of a boy killed by Demeter in her first shock of grief. Little touches like that keep even the most well known myths fresh. But I'm sorry to say that my most vivid memory of this book was triggered by the history video on The Columbian Exchange that I watched right before reading it, because that meant that when Ceres is identified as the goddess of the cornfield I laughed outright and showed the book to P, who also smirked knowingly. I actually doubt that ancient Greek gods assigned corn fields to anyone in particular.

Anyway, today was a good book day, including a very pleasant book club with delicious food, great weather, and interesting conversation. (We read Soulless, by Gail Carriger, which got different opinions so made for fun talk.)

Strange Names: The Secret of the Indian

Lynne Reid Banks has written a handful of books about a boy whose magic cupboard brings his toys to life, and the complications that ensue. They're good complications, because the toys really come to life, or rather become actual people represented by the kind of toy -- the toy Indian figure becomes a real seventeenth century Algonquin man, who is not impressed at being suddenly tiny and in modern times.

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The Secret of the Indian is the third book, where Omri deals with the aftermath of enlisting an army of miniatures to help him fend off a burglary, and also deal with his friends who are reluctant to treat the living toys as real people, preferring to enslave them as animated toys. Oh, and the parents who find many of the explanations unconvincing, and the few adults who have an idea of what is going on and immediately fixate on how they could profit from it. It's rather a thoughtful little elementary school book, but unfortunately I'm so distracted by the strange names that I can't really concentrate on it. Omri? Gillon? Adiel? Their parents are Lionel and Jane, so I have no idea how to picture the family.

I should probably have gone with a more ambitious book; it really wasn't a day to waste on a short easy read, since I got to spend an hour waiting in the airport for my kids to come through customs. Oh well, I couldn't read anything too engrossing because I really wanted to see them. Welcome home, world travelers!

Different Lives: The Family From One End Street

I tend to gravitate towards old-fashioned family books, particularly ones that are old fashioned because they were written a long time ago.  My copy of Eve Garnett's The Family From One End Street has a published date of 1939, which is a lucky year because my mom was born in it. It was actually written a bit before that, so it's actually older than her, but it's set a bit earlier than that. There's no war, no depression, just a family in a town that Miss Read would recognize, with too many kids and not enough money but a genial ability to just get on with it since their family can handle it all.

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Each chapter follows a specific story, first going through the oldest five kids as they have smallish adventures such as losing an (expensive) school hat that should have lasted five years and instead won't make it to the start of term at the secondary school. The twin boys have more improbably adventures that still pinpoint the alien nature of the past, with the English shadings of class and money. I remember liking these when I was a kid just as I liked science fiction and fantasy; it seemed just as unlikely. Anyway, a cosy and happy story about people living very different lives.

First Book: Stranger Next Door

For each of my sons I can pick up a book that was really their first immersion in reading, the first book that they cared about finishing, the text that really started their lives as independent readers. For X, that was Wen Spencer's Alien Taste, and he's never looked back. P has a more controlled relationship with books, but Peg Kehret's The Stranger Next Door was the book that he picked out, that he read, and that he finished.


So, of course I had to get a copy when I saw it in a Scholastic catalog, but of course I had read it over his shoulder at the time, so I just tossed the new copy in the shelves until it popped back up today. It's a competent little book, a slight mystery with a lonely boy and a cute cat. The plot moves along, and the words never get in their own way. My only concern as a book for my young son was the violence lurking in the corners -- the new boy, the stranger next door, is in the witness protection program so the mob doesn't take out his family. I thought that was a bit grim until the real villain showed up, kidnapped the pet owner at gun point and then locked him up in a burning building. Okay, now we are talking raised levels of violence.

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Of course, compared to the shots and deaths in Spencer's book I have nothing to complain about, but I knew what to expect when X wandered to the wrong section of my library and started reading one of my SF books. P's book came from the children's section, and I guess I can be glad that the cat doesn't head for the big catnip patch in the sky by the end. In general I like Kehret for her realistic (well, non-fantastic) stories with kids dealing with real world problems, and in particular I like the insertion of Pete the cat's sections in these particular books.