Review of Living Hell by Catherine Jinks

Jinks, Catherine. Living Hell. Houghton Mifflin, 2010.

It's hard to find YA SF these days that isn't about some hideous dystopian near-future. I like reading about nuclear winter, nasty dictatorships, and hungry zombies as much as the next person, but for me, true SF means outer space. Like most folks hooked at an early age by Heinlein and his ilk, tales of aliens, space travel, and distant planets make my heart beat faster.

Living Hell's cover art, with its swashbuckling space suit-clad teen and waving alien tentacles, promises a riproaring space adventure, and to a certain extent it delivers. This is a nail-biting adventure in the old-fashioned SF tradition with a classic setting - the generation ship, taking colonists on a decades-long trip to find a habitable planet that they can settle. 16-year-old Cheney is one of them, having been born during the voyage. The ship Plexus is the only world he has ever known, and even as he tells us about how life as he knew it changed, his narrative voice is filled with nostalgia for those days of long ship corridors made of metal and plastic.

Change it does, and pretty drastically. After flying through a mysterious force, the ship begins to alter, becoming a living entity. Not in any kind of sterile "Hal" way - that's been done too often. No, the physical ship itself turns from metal and plastic into sinew, muscle, and tissue. Imagine living in someone's guts, a la Fantastic Voyage, except that they don't have a space ship to zoom around in. Instead, they have to venture through the now spongy, slimy, lumpy, stringy pink hallways and corridors on foot. Oh, and as in Fantastic Voyage, there is a rather active immune system that sees the humans as intruders who must be destroyed.

This is not a light-hearted SF romp. The body count is high, the deaths are gruesome, and the outlook is grim. This was somewhat unexpected for me, as Catherine Jinks' previous books, not to mention the corny retro jacket art, led me to believe there would be some kind of tongue-in-cheek levity. And while the idea of everyday objects like shuttles and laundry detergent discs transforming into internal body parts is sort of amusing at first, the reality is quite horrifying.

Cheney, our narrator, describes all this in vivid and visceral terms. The reaction of everyone from children to adults to this terrifying situation is absolutely authentic. Faced with a new hideous sight or discovery, the first reaction is often a panicked wail of "Oh no! Oh NO!" But then folks rally and do what they need to do to survive, successfully or otherwise. No one does anything that seems super-heroish or out of character, so the reader stays fully immersed in the intensity of the action.

Amidst the action, we do learn a lot about the culture aboard a relatively small generation ship. Loyalty and a sense of team spirit are clearly indoctrinated from an early age - Cheney's intense admiration for his "big brother" or mentor is balanced by his fierce and unquestioned need to keep the younger children safe. The fact that his "little brother" is such a wild and unpredictable person disturbs him greatly, as ship life is all about harmony and control - but that disruptive spirit might well be needed to deal with this new situation they all find themselves in.

The denoument is abrupt and somewhat predictable, and the reader will be left with lots of questions. We know from the beginning that Cheney, at least, will survive this encounter - but the details of his existence must be guessed at, as we only get hints. One thing I love about dystopian books is all that gritty detail about daily life under duress, but we don't get that here. How does one ever get clean if one lives in something's slimy guts? Inquiring minds want to know (but would rather not spend to much time imagining - bleah!).

All in all, good scary gooey slimy deadly fun - in outer space! Recommended for ages 13 and up.

It wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her

Have you ever swallowed a fly? I have, a time or two. The nasty thing about flies (and I'm talking the real deal, not those insubstantial no-see-'ums, dozens of which I probably inhaled during my run this morning) is that they don't just go straight down.

First, they stick in your throat. Flies are astonishingly spiky, so they feel like particularly bristly burrs, and your first reaction is to hack and cough and spit and hack again. To no avail, usually. And meanwhile, you're certain that this fly may emit some kind of corrosive poison, which will cause your throat to close up. Death by Fly is NOT what you want your death certificate to say.

Because the fly won't come up, and because its presence in your throat is intolerable, you decide to swallow it down. This is not a decision lightly made, as the thought of a fly buzzing in your stomach is only slightly less horrifying than the reality of 6 sharp little legs and 2 wings lodged in your throat, but in desperation, you swallow convulsively. And swallow, and hack, and swallow - and is your throat closing up? Is a poison even now coursing through your bloodstream? Could that have been a bee??

Finally, the fly can no longer be felt in your throat, having quietly dropped down into your stomach during all the panic and uproar.

By that time, you're so relieved at not being able to feel that prickly lump in your throat that you go on with your day. Unless, of course, you're the Old Lady. And really, I can't really blame her for her unorthodox and ultimately deadly cure for a swallowed fly. A desperate situation calls for desperate measures.

"This is my refuge"

Hector Tobar has a poignant column in the LA Times about the LA Public Library's new "closed on Mondays" hours, while schools languish and the newest Halo installment had a midnight launch on a school night.

He writes "Game publishers make millions. School systems cut millions. Libraries lock their doors. Obviously, there's something wrong with this equation."

If plastic bottles were horses...

Being stuck behind a desk all day makes one forget that the City of Los Angeles is a veritable hive of creative activity, full of people busily spinning miracles out of thin air.

And then earlier this month, all manner of fascinating objects appeared in the Youth Services office, made of discarded paper and plastic and cardboard and other found or recyclable materials. Colorful and eye-poppingly creative, these were the regional finalists of our Teen Reading Club "Trash to Art" contest. To ensure that the judging was both objective and expert, we recruited staff from Central Library's Art and Recreation department to choose the top 4 winners.

Not only were these art pieces fabulous in themselves, but most of them were accompanied by touching explanations by the teen artists. Crystal, who created a violin out of cardboard, toilet paper rolls, plastic spoons, and newspaper, writes, "...Think of the amount of trees on this earth that are diminishing by the second...Imagine, instead of using wood to make instruments like violins, pianos, and guitars, we use things like plastic or even old cardboard!" Jacqueline, who created a lovely strapless dress from newspaper, make-ready sheets, packing tape, and velcro, assures us that the dress is "surprisingly lightweight and comfortable!" And Grace, who was not a top winner but whose plastic bottle/caps/newspaper/sand "Flower of the Future" is perky and charming, writes, "I created a flower because I see trash in nature everywhere."

1st Place Winner: Carousel Horse
Lisa R and Isabelo L, Memorial Branch

This life-sized horse made from bottles, straws, plastic bags, and clear packing tape, is a jaw-dropper. These two teens are accomplished artists.

2nd Place Winner: Violin
Crystal T, Age 14, Westwood Branch

This violin looks like the real thing from a distance. Don't you love the plastic spoons?

3rd Place Winner: Dress
Jacqueline G, age 16, Sherman Oaks Branch

Really, I should have modeled this so you can get the full effect, but it shows a bit too much leg for my comfort.

Honorable Mention: Purse
Anais M, 8th grade, Venice Branch

Plenty of staff members expressed an interest in purchasing this handbag, which is knitted from 20 plastic bags and is pretty much guaranteed to last forever.

Review of Boom! by Mark Haddon

Haddon, Mark. Boom! David Fickling Books, 2010.

One of the defining moments of my first trip to England (besides nearly getting creamed by a double-decker bus near Trafalgar Square because I looked left, not right, before jaywalking) was discovering that the "cheese and pickle" sandwich I bought from a small shop was not in fact a cheese sandwich with bright green slices of pickled cucumber, but rather a cheese sandwich slathered with a brownish sweetish chutney-like substance. Ah! Toto, I've a feeling we're not in the United States any more.

And so it is with Boom! Here are the first two sentences of the book: "I was on the balcony eating a sandwich. Red Leicester and gooseberry jam." Wham, the reader is transported to merry old Great Britain. Here are some other exotic words one encounters during this breezy and often hilarious SF novel: garibaldi biscuits, secateurs, flat, paracetamol, articulated lorry, noughts and crosses, and tarmac. As someone who is offended by the word "flashlight" being substituted for "torch" in books that clearly take place in England, I find this refreshing indeed. American kids aren't so dumb and provincial that they can't figure out and even relish some good British lingo. So hats off to Boom!'s editor, who left the language intact in the American edition.

As for the plot, it's got two intrepid lads, plenty of sinister aliens disguised as teachers and other innocuous folks, a brave and reckless big sister, a wild ride through Scotland, a space station, and a loch - in other words, plenty of good stuff, even if it doesn't hang together very well. Let's say there are just a few loose ends. But it's the sheer funniness of the book, both its tone and its tossed-off one-liners, that is its huge selling point. Oh, and the bright orange cover and the exclamation point in the title.

I'm ranking this up there with Adam Rex's The True Meaning of Smekday, Frank Cottrell Boyce's Cosmic, and K.A. Holt's Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel as funny and excellent science fiction for middle grade kids.

Highly recommended for grades 4 to 6.

Review of Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray

Gray, Keith. Ostrich Boys. Random House, 2010.

What is it about road trips that is so seductive and compelling? Simply steering my car toward the freeway that will carry me out of town makes my heart beat faster, even if I'm just headed to the San Fernando Valley to visit one of the library branches there. And if I keep going on one of my semi-annual 400-mile trips to visit rellies in Sacramento? Woohoo! Queen of the Road, baby!

Ostrich Boys has a good bit of that adrenalin-fueled excitement, made even spicier by the fact that Blake, Sim, and Kenny are heading out illicitly. In fact, the road trips taken by teens in most books are either accidental (as in Ry's journey in Lynne Rae Perkins' As Easy As Falling Off The Face of the Earth) or a way of running away from something (as in Rachel Ward's Numbers) or to something (Siobhan Dowd's Solace of the Road). Generally, the road trips are not what any adult would consider a Good Idea - but that makes them all the more compelling.

Sensible, stocky Blake is our narrator, and he makes it seem an inevitable result of the trio's true friendship with and understanding of their friend Ross that they steal his cremated ashes (not long after he has been killed by a car while riding his bike) and abscond with them to Ross, Scotland. As it turns out, they didn't understand Ross - or each other, or themselves - as well as they thought, but after a whirlwind trip full of missteps, bonding, quarreling, girls, and bungee jumping, things are much more clear. Not necessarily better, just more clear.

The nature and mystery of male friendship is slowly revealed between madcap bouts of misadventure, and somehow it all feels realistic. Well - there's a wild ride on stolen motorscooters that has more than a touch of Teen Movie about it, but still, the scene is both funny and ludicrous enough to work.

Girls are the ones who know how to be friends, a girl tells Blake at one point. They tell each other everything, give each other presents, and are always there for each other. Boys don't do that! And while Blake feels hotly defensive of his own close friendship with his pals, he doesn't quite know how to convince her; he just knows how important it is. Readers of Ostrich Boys will certainly agree with Blake that Guy Friendship is a deep thing indeed.

A fine road trip/friendship novel for ages 13 - 16.

LA loves libraries; its politicians don't

Read this LA Weekly article for a thoughtful look at our struggles to provide library service in Los Angeles.