In the Name of God-- Paula Jolin

What may have been controversial is spelled-out and palatable in this book about a young woman's faith and her bend towards fundamentalism. At 17, Nadia is religious and a good student, not certain what her future holds. When the police arrest her beloved cousin, Nadia can no longer bear the injustice she sees around her-- Iraqi homes bombed, Palestinians killed, and poverty and cronyism in her home country of Syria. Her family doesn't know what to do about Nadia's growing detachment; Nadia doesn't know what to do with her anger. When she is enlisted in a bomb plot, Nadia discovers a sense of purpose and comes to a decision: she wants to be the detonator.

There are some things this book does very well. The setting-- time, place, political climate, public sentiment-- were familiar to me; it felt very right. I got the sense that Jolin was very careful in how she portrayed the characters, too, fleshing them out and showing their imperfect relationships with religion and with each other. This book seems very conscious of its role in introducing young readers to the Middle East, Islam, and fundamentalism without muddling the three.

While the book is ambitious in many regards, I found the plot slow. I didn't have any attachment to Nadia and her family, which didn't help; while they had some dimension as characters, they lacked emotional qualities. You can't really blame Nadia for her feelings, but it's hard to get attached to her. You also never really feel love for anyone else in her life; maybe it's because Nadia is always angry and never really shows attachment to anyone, but even her relationship with Fowzi seemed lackluster. Speaking those emotions would have only helped me better understand Nadia's choices, which don't hold up as well as they should.

I would be very interested to hear what young readers think of this book-- it has the potential to be challenging in all the right ways, if it's compelling enough to bring people on board.

I Am the Messenger-- Markus Zusak

Zusak got a lot of press for The Book Thief, which I may or may not get around to this year. But I Am the Messenger is a mystery, and I've already told you how I feel about those.

(This makes me wonder-- why don't I tend to read mystery/ suspense novels for adults? My first thought is to say there are major differences between these and their young adult counterparts, but I have to give that some thought.)

I Am the Messenger is suspenseful, sweet, funny, and heartbreaking all at once. Ed Kennedy is 19, living in a shack in the same town where he grew up, but distant his family. He doesn't think much of himself; he feels stuck in his cab-driving job, and stuck in his hopeless love for his best friend Audrey, and sees his three friends as rather stuck too. One day, Ed unwittingly stops a bank robbery, and then receives a playing card in the mail with three addresses written on it. He can't run from these responsibilities and he can't doubt himself-- he is the messenger.

The story takes a series of emotional turns, connecting Ed to many people who were strangers-- even the people he knows well. Zusak does suspense really well; I had to finish this book the same day I started. It's not as subtle as When You Reach Me and the ending is not as clever, but it's incredibly enjoyable, and perhaps more relatable for older and/ or male readers.

Recommended for high school readers on account of some sexual content, some of it troubling, but nothing graphic.

When the Emperor Was Divine-- Julie Otsuka

As I read this, a thought occurred to me: why didn't we read a single book about Japanese internment when I was in school? Up until high school, history classes alternated between state history and U.S. history; internment could have been taught in either context, but it wasn't. I mentioned in a previous review that I had two Holocaust literature units in high school, but nowhere did we discuss the atrocities that transpired only miles from our own homes.

The brief and poetic When the Emperor Was Divine would have been the perfect book for my middle school or freshman year classes. The first page, in and of itself, is exquisite. I got a chill envisioning this nameless woman walking down University Avenue, seeing an evacuation notice in the window, and going home to pack her things without knowing where exactly she was going.

The story follows the unnamed characters many places-- to the backyard of their Berkeley bungalow, a train headed east, an internment camp in the Utah desert, and memories of the past-- but only with occasional glimpses into their innermost feelings. Most of what we know of the characters is divined from their actions: the practical mother does her best to keep her conduct from betraying emotion, the young boy's thought processes are full of unspoken fear, and the girl simply runs away from the reader. We observe the most intimate, telling things about these characters, but they don't even have names. In some ways, we don't know them at all.

I did not expect the book to follow the family back home. For all I knew about internment, I had never imagined what that return must have felt like. The violated house and the coldness of the neighborhood are one thing, but the family that returns to the house is also very different from the one that left.

The Perfect Man-- Naeem Murr

The cruelty in the first chapter of A Perfect Man took my breath away. We see Rajiv as a five year-old boy, dropped into the hands of his aunt and uncle in London. His father, who purchased Rajiv's mother for 20 GBP during his wartime exploits in India, abandons him en route to another entrepreneurial opportunity in South Africa. Eventually, Raj is left in the care of an aging romance writer in Pisgah, Missouri. It seems that everyone is the sum of their weaknesses in this small town; it's classic gothic, Faulknerian awfulness.

Raj and his friends are an interesting mix-- their characters alternately inspire disgust, heartbreak, pity, and affection. The prose is complex and the characters impeccably developed, drawing contrast between adults and children, men and women, inclusion and isolation, guilt and innocence, love and (I have to say it again; there is no better word) cruelty.

The first half of the book is flawless. I actually wrote part of this review in the early stages, saying this was likely my best book of the year. Unfortunately, something goes awry towards the end... the plot becomes diffused and erratic, and the tragic developments are not framed well. This tempers the melodrama and left me with an unsettled feeling, but it didn't do much for the story.

The characters are wonderful (and terrible), but at the very end I felt that Murr failed the character of Raj. Over the course of the book, we everyone's head except but Raj's, leaving the character impenetrable even though we see him from all angles and his actions speak volumes. When we finally hear from him in the last chapter only for the purpose of tying up lose ends, it's anticlimactic and depressing.

The other odd thing about the last chapter is that it reduced the rest of the book-- which is about many things-- to be mostly about one thing, even though that thing is not what stands out most to me. I thought the title of the book didn't seem to fit until that last chapter, but at that point it cheapened what at first felt like a book about the universe. But maybe I missed the point. (Throughout the book, I kept wondering if I missed the point.)

This book is incredibly dark, and it left me with a lead weight in my stomach I am still trying to shake. Recommended for mature readers (late high school, at the youngest).

Sold-- Patricia McCormick

I am of two minds about this book.

This is one of those stories that is everywhere, but worth a close look. Lakshmi and her mother live in a Bangladeshi village, in one of the few mud huts with traditional thatched roofs. The neighbors have tin roofs over their heads, but then again, the men in those families don't drink and gamble away their money like Lakshmi's stepfather does. Her family's situation becomes more and more desperate until Lakshmi's stepfather sells her to do work in the city. Lakshmi is told she will work as a maid, but everyone else knows she is brothel-bound.

The prose is self is good-- evocative free verse, exploring village life in Bangladesh and, later, brothel life in India. The images and feelings ring true.

The glaring deficiency in Sold is the lack of character development. At age 12, Lakshmi worships her mother and vaguely dislikes her stepfather. Her feelings really don't develop much by the time that she's 14 except it's clear that doesn't like being a prostitute. From her actions, we can imply that Lakshmi is clever, loves learning, and has a determined streak, but there is nothing personal or distinguishing about her voice.

This deficiency matters here, because it makes the difference between a book about a "real" person and a book about an issue. This, unfortunately, is the latter. I felt that Lakshmi was a convenient vehicle for this story; the narrative objectified her even as it heavy-handedly asserted the fact of her humanity. It surprises me that authors get away with this as often as they do, frankly.

The ending was particularly sloppy and the last part rendered the character of Lakshmi completely hollow for me. Disappointing.

The London Eye Mystery-- Siobhan Dowd

As a kid, I loved mystery novels. Whenever our librarian highlighted a title with "mystery" in the title or "mysterious" in the plot description, I swear I trampled the other kids to get it to the checkout desk first.

(Ok, maybe I wasn't that aggro. But my enthusiasm for the genre is not to be under-emphasized.)

The London Eye Mystery totally had me squirming in my seat with suspense, much like the last mystery I read and loved. In much the same way, this one also has a lot of other great stuff going on in addition to the compelling plot.

Ted and Kat take their cousin Salim to ride the London Eye, and just can't refuse the free ticket offered to him by a stranger. They track his pod all the way around; when it comes back down again, everyone gets off-- but not Salim. The grown-ups commandeer the investigation into Salim's disappearance; although Ted has some "interesting theories," no one will listen to him except Kat. They decide to conduct an investigation of their own.

Ted-- with his formal dress, BBC accent, and obsession with meteorology-- is an excellent character and a great young detective. He takes everything literally (a manifestation of his Asperger syndrome), which makes for some very funny moments. His system for recognizing other's emotions, and his tics indicating his own feelings, add unexpected dimensions to his narration. He is used to being written off by people and doesn't have many friends; young readers need not have autism to identify with his outsider status. In an addition, there is some very astute observation of family dynamics and racist bullying that gives the story serious substance.

I thought I had the plot all figured out in the first two chapters, but then I realized there was a whole other side to the mystery I hadn't considered. The last bit of unraveling was unexpected; it seems unlikely that the kids would piece it together, but there's no underestimating Ted.

The Not-So-Star-Spangled Life of Sunita Sen-- Mitali Perkins

I have been trying to slog through this book since the end of February, which is really saying something because it's only a little over 150 pages.

Sunita Sen is enjoying her little 7th grade life until her grandparents come for a visit from India. Her mother takes time off teaching to stay at home and play housewife to keep her parents happy, and she tells Sunita she can't invite boys over to the house. Apparently, this is the equivalent of torture and Sunita blames her grandparents for ruining her life. She keeps thinking the object of her affection, Michael, is so all-American that he would be weirded out by her family.

Here is a short list of my issues with this book:

1) Even though Sunita claims to be confused about her heritage, she doesn't seem have any connection to it. This is despite the fact that her parents are recent immigrants. I find this disconnect improbable, especially since it is not explored or otherwise explained.

2) When Sunita finally spills the beans about what's going on at home, Michael says that Sunita being "different" makes her "all the more fascinating" to him. Ugh. Orientalism for middle schoolers.

3) The writing is lackluster, the dialogue not believable, the characters completely flat. The author does a lot of telling instead of showing (including telling us that Sunita used to have a really happy personality, even though we never see her as anything other than an insufferable brat). Sunita always anticipates her grandparents acting entirely out of character, which is irritating, and her grandmother's attempts to "speak American" are just insulting.

I thought this book might resonate a little bit with me, but it only left me appalled. This book only got press marching under the banner of multiculturalism; good for the book, but not so good for everyone else.

Kampung Boy/ Town Boy-- Lat

It seemed a little soon to spring into my next graphic novel, but I couldn't resist the playful illustrations on the cover of Lat's books.

Kampung Boy is set in a Malaysian village in the 1950s, where the author was born and spent his early childhood.

The illustrations of little Mat are so cute I couldn't help but grin. One of my favorite pictures of him playing hide-and-seek with his father; Mat is hidden under the edge of the rug with the perfect little-kid expression of "I'm-so-clever-he'll-never-find-me-here"-- you can practically hear the little giggle that will give his hiding spot away. I also like the picture of Mat rocking his baby sister to sleep.

The book gradually incorporates more serious themes. Mat realizes that his father has high expectations of him, and he starts to apply himself in school. Village life and the local rubber industry are displaced by the activities of a large tin company, which eventually buys the rubber plantation Mat was supposed to inherit. When Mat earns a place in the nearby town's boarding school, he says goodbye to the kampung and hopes that he will be able to return. Sadly, we already have the sense that there will be nothing to come back to.

I devoured Kampung Boy in short order and moved on directly to the sequel, Town Boy. While the second book lacks the coherent story of the first, the illustrations of town life are even more arresting. Town Boy is equally steeped in nostalgia, as Ipoh of the 1960s is as lost as the kampung of the 1950s.

I am categorizing these books as graphic novels due to the heavy use of illustration, but they are not told in comic form (that is, not in a picture sequence). This is more of a sophisticated picture book, where the drawings do most of the talking. It seems to me that these books don't fall within a certain age group-- the vocabulary is simple but loaded with cultural concepts that might be challenging for younger readers. At the same time, I think that the illustrations and themes in the books have mass appeal.

While Lat's work is extremely popular in Southeast Asia, these books are the first to be published in the United States. Given the excellent reception, I hope these books continue to gain an international following.

A Step From Heaven- An Na

When I went hunting for contemporary young adult novels about immigrants' experiences, An Na's name came up everywhere. A Step From Heaven is her first book. I thought I'd start there.

Young Ju is only four when her family leaves her beloved grandmother, their comfortable home, and Young Ju's best friend behind to move to the United States. Young Ju believes the US is heaven, where she will be reunited with her deceased grandfather and there will be no more arguments, but her family's life as immigrants is full of new challenges. Young Ju works hard in school and at home to make her parents proud, but nothing can change her father's stingy praise or violent temper.

This slim novel is incredibly powerful, told by the protagonist in a series of vignettes spanning Young Ju's childhood in Korea to her senior year of high school in the United States. The protagonist's younger years are full of particularly delightful sensory imagery. I was struck by the way in which each scene captured so much in terms of the family dynamic and Young Ju's innermost feelings in just a handful of words.

Kira-Kira-- Cynthia Kadohata

"She was going to be the best in the world and live at the top of everything, and she was going to bring her family with her. This is one of the themes of my sister's life."

Lynn, through the eyes of her younger sister Katie, is perfect. Lynn teaches Katie that life is beautiful ("kira-kira" means "glittering"-- it's Katie's first word, which Lynn taught her after many nights of looking up at the stars). Their parents also leave it to Lynn to break difficult news to Katie (and before her first day of school, Lynn tells Katie that she may be called names and treated as different). Katie doesn't want to do anything without Lynn, but when her sister is struck with mysterious illness, Katie has no choice.

The focus of Kira-Kira is the bittersweet sibling relationship, but the book is extraordinary in its exploration of growing up nikkei in the Jim Crow south. In a world divided along the lines of black and white, Katie doesn't know how she fits in. Katie's parents, like the other members of the small Japanese community, work in the chicken hatcheries in town. The hours are long and hard, without even breaks to use the bathroom, and the wealthy owner of the enterprise tries to crush the workers’ attempts to unionize.

I wish these compelling features of the book had more been the focus, but the family issues make this an accessible read.

I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade-- Diane Lee Wilson

I never would have picked up this book if I had known it was a horse story. I am not a horse girl. I don't understand horse girls (no offense, horse-loving friends; you just keep doing your thing). So why someone would enlist in Kublai Khan's army on account of a horse blows my mind. (My dear brother, a bottomless pit of miscellaneous knowledge, lectured me on the incredible importance of horses in Mongolian culture. Thanks, A, for that. Even so, this seems a little extreme.) Also, why does homegirl bring a kitten with her? I'm just sayin'.

Anyway, as Super Grover would say, on to our story...

Our heroine, Oyuna, is all bad luck. When she was two, she was injured by a horse and has been crippled ever since. Her mother later dies in a tragic accident. No one wants to marry her. She gets to choose a horse of her own, and even she doesn't fully understand why she chooses an old, injured mare. Shaman grandma comes to visit and Oyuna admits that she hears the horse talking to her. Grandma tells Oyuna to prepare for a journey, and then disappears. When the Khan's army comes for the family's horses, Oyuna decides to go with them. Quest ensues. Oyuna makes chit-chat with the Khan (which just seems weird to me) and ultimately gets the swift horses of her dreams. Maybe, thinks Oyuna, it's possible to make your own luck. (In this book, that last point is about as subtle as a whack with a baseball bat.)

This book is all plot. The characters are flattish, and the cultural context seems contrived. That said, it's very fast-paced and readable for age 10-12.

Kiffe-Kiffe Tomorrow-- Faïza Guène

I had high hopes for this book. I am seriously obsessed with the dysfunctional construct that is French multiculturalism. I read a lot of Franco-Maghrebi literature in college. I am deeply interested in the narratives of immigrant youth. On all fronts, I should have loved Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow.

False logic. I was disappointed because Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow is really just another story about life in the projects. I use the word "story" very loosely here because nothing happens over the course of the book. Doria lives in the suburbs of Paris with her mother. Her alcoholic father returned to Morocco to marry someone else in hopes of having a son. Doria fails out of school, her mother is underemployed, the neighbors have it rough, cousin goes to prison, the social workers just don't understand, etc. Mom learns to read, Doria goes to hairdressing school and gets over her crush on the drug-addict neighbor, optimism replaces some of her cynicism. Fin.

Guène, raised in the projects she writes about, was only 19 when she wrote Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow. Girl keeps it real, which I admire. The narrative voice is sarcastic and has a young feel to it-- I'll bet it's delightful to read in French. That said, I found the story itself uninspiring and uninspired. I can't say how many books there are like this in France, but I can see why it got a lot of attention if there is nothing richer to compare it to.