Just Being Audrey: A Picture Book Review

Just Being Audrey by by Margaret Cardillo, illustrated by Julia Denos

As the title suggests, this picture book is about Audrey Hepburn–her early life, her aspirations to become a ballerina, her success in Hollywood and her later-life work with UNICEF.

I love Audrey, who doesn’t? Cardillo’s text was an interesting insight into the background of an actress who many still remember as the epitome of style and elegance. The text offered an interesting but slightly unbalanced look at Audrey’s life from her childhood to her old age. (A timeline at the back details key events that were not mentioned in the narrative.) However there are very few transitions with each page spread seeming to have little connection to the pages that come before or after. The overall effect was a very choppy story albeit one filled with interesting tidbits.

Denos’  illustrations are gorgeous with beautiful details and color. The pictures all have a lovely sense of movement as Audrey “glides” through the pages.

There is certainly enough here to pique a child’s interest about Audrey Hepburn but fans looking for more thorough information will have to find a different book.

This would be a fun addition to a “non-fiction” or “biography” themed storytime with it’s large, bright pictures and relatively short text.

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Sound good? Find it on Amazon: Just Being Audrey

Keep Holding On: A Chick Lit Wednesday Review

Noelle is marking time until she can escape. In a year and a half she can get away from her mother’s erratic behavior and neglect. The torment she’s been suffering since middle school will finally stop. She’ll be able move away to the City without looking back. Her life can really start.

Before that can happen Noelle has to make it through the rest of her junior year. Not to mention senior year.

Some days Noelle isn’t sure she’ll last that long.

It’s hard enough being the poor kid in a rich suburb. Being harassed and humiliated and feeling completely alone makes it a lot harder. Even Noelle’s best friend doesn’t know how bad it is. No one does.

When Noelle’s long-time crush starts talking to her, she isn’t sure what to do. Sure, she likes Julian. But what happens when he realizes she is the punchline in almost every mean joke at school? What happens when Noelle starts thinking she doesn’t deserve him?

Noelle tentatively reaches out to new and old friends but the bullying just gets worse. Holding on to her dreams about her future aren’t enough anymore. It might be time to focus on what she deserves here in the present instead  in Keep Holding On (2012) by Susane Colasanti.

At 224 pages, Keep Holding On is one of Colasanti’s shorter novels. It is inspired by Colasanti’s own experiences with bullying.

This book is a short, achingly honest read. Noelle’s experiences are horrific not just because of the abuse she suffers but because so many people see parts of the neglect and the bullying but choose to look away instead of helping.

Being so short, there isn’t a lot of room to expand the story or fully examine secondary characters. That said, Colasanti focuses on what’s important presenting a tight narrative about Noelle’s growth over the course a school year.

While parts of Noelle’s story will break your heart, Noelle’s resilience will help mend it. While Colasanti is known for writing about soul mates finding each other, Keep Holding On focuses more on Noelle’s own transformation as she realizes she deserves to feel safe and loved. More importantly, as the story progresses, Noelle realizes she is in control when it comes to finding those safe places–and love too.

Keep Holding On also has a list of resources for anyone who is feeling alone and wants to find people ready to help available at the end of the book and on her website: http://susanecolasanti.com/keepholdingon.html

Possible Pairings: Dear Bully: Seventy Authors Tell Their Stories edited by Megan Kelley Hall and Carrie Jones, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher, Leverage by Joshua C. Cohen, Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley, Boy Toy by Barry Lyga, Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta, Mostly Good Girls by Leila Sales, A Map of the Known World by Lisa Ann Sandell, How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford

*This book was acquired for review from the publisher at BEA 2012
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Sound good? Find it on Amazon: Keep Holding On

Deadly Pink: A Chick Lit Wednesday Review

When Grace’s mother pulls her out of class Grace knows something is wrong. What she never would have guessed is that it’s Grace’s smart, talented, generally better sister Emily who is in trouble.

After working at Rassmussem as a game programmer for college credit, Emily has inexplicably decided to go into the game she was building. According to the note she left behind, Emily doesn’t plan to come out. Ever.

With time running out before the immersive reality game equipment does permanent damage to Emily, Rassmussem is running out of options to get Emily out of a game she clearly doesn’t want to leave. They hope Grace might be able to help.

But inside the game is nothing Grace expected. Her sister has taken refuge inside a game designed for little girls complete with frilly dresses and unicorns. Worse Emily wants nothing to do with Grace and she definitely doesn’t want to leave.

Grace always considered herself the average sister compared to Emily. But with her sister in real danger, this average girl will have to think her way out of this problem before it’s too late in Deadly Pink (2012) by Vivian Vande Velde.

Deadly Pink is Vande Velde’s third novel featuring Rassmussem games with the first and second being Heir Apparent and User Unfriendly respectively.

Fourteen-year-old Grace is an authentic narrator with equal parts sarcasm and (especially later in the novel) ingenuity. While the game itself is not the most interesting, or well-developed, setting Vande Velde does an excellent job presenting Grace’s complicated relationship with her older sister.

Unlike Heir Apparent the focus of this book is more on the characters than the game play. With most of the non-playing characters playing minor roles in the plot, most of the story deals with Grace trying to convince Emily to leave the game.

While both sisters are well-rounded characters, the lack of setting and secondary characters for the majority of the novel is a major weakness. The game is never explained to Grace or the reader giving the effect of Grace running blindly through the game with little understanding of where she is supposed to go or how she is going to save Emily. Grace’s constant plodding through the game while never asking advice from anyone makes for a plodding plot that drags.

The story picks up in the last third of Deadly Pink as Grace comes into her own. Finally embracing her strengths andalso using the limitations of the game’s play to her own advantage, Grace proves at last that she is a heroine worth reading about. If the entire book had been like this small part, it would have been a definite winner.

Unfortunately the story falters once again with a rushed ending to explain Emily’s motivations to go into the game as well as a hurried explanation of what happens after the game is over.

If there are more Rassmussem stories to be told, one can only hope they will return to the style of Vande Velde’s earlier novels.

Possible Pairings: Boy Proof by Cecil Castellucci, Dramacon by Svetlana Chmakova, Alter Ego by Robbie Cooper, Missing Abby by Lee Weatherly

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Sound good? Find it on Amazon: Deadly Pink

Graffiti Moon: A Chick Lit Wednesday Review

Lucy has been chasing Shadow for years. An elusive graffiti artist, he’s left his mark all across the city and all across Lucy’s life. She knows Shadow is someone she could fall for. Hard. She knows, finally, she is close to finding him.

At the end of Senior Year Lucy’s friends Jazz and Daisy want an adventure. Lucy doesn’t. She wants to find Shadow and tell him how she feels. She doesn’t want to spend the night with Ed–not after she has finally escaped the gossip and rumors surrounding their first and last disastrous date two years ago.

But when the adventure Jazz wants turns into what Lucy wants, she knows she has to go along. Even if Ed is the person who might finally bring her to Shadow.

Ed thought his life was finally coming together after he left school. Instead it’s all falling apart. No job. No girl. And definitely no prospects. Haunted by all of the places he isn’t going, Ed leaves his mark across the city walls as Shadow saying with pictures what no one seems to hear in his words. Doesn’t matter anyway. His best friend Leo is the perfect Poet to his Shadow.

Too bad Leo is better with words than with life choices. Instead of a night spent working on another wall, Ed is drawn into Leo’s horrible plan to hang out with girls from school before making yet another terrible decision that could get them both in big trouble.

The prospect of spending a night with the girl who broke his nose is bad enough. When Leo offers to help that girl find Shadow and Poet, he knows it’s going to be trouble. But he goes along anyway.

As Ed walks Lucy through Shadow’s art, the night that promised to be a disaster turns into something else. In a city filled with missed connections and opportunity, Ed and Lucy are right where they’re supposed to be in Graffiti Moon (2012) by Cath Crowley.

Set over the course of one night, Crowley takes readers on a journey through Shadow’s art and also through each character’s background. At 257 pages, Graffiti Moon is a deceptively short book. Its length belies the broad range of things Crowley packs into this one marvelous novel.

Crowley uses a dual narrative structure to great effect here (as she did previously in A Little Wanting Song). Chapters alternate between Lucy and Ed’s narrations. Poets from Leo are also scattered throughout. With voices all their own, Lucy and Ed’s narratives sometimes overlap to show both of their interpretations of events and each other.

Filled with art, poetry, and humor Graffiti Moon is an evocative story filled with beautiful writing and characters that are achingly real. Immediately inspiring and refreshingly hopeful, Graffiti Moon is completely engrossing and a brilliant reminder that everyone has time to become exactly who they’re meant to be.

Possible Pairings: Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, When It Happens by Susane Colasanti, Paper Towns by John Green, Before I Die by Jenny Downham, The Piper’s Son by Melina Marchetta, After the Kiss by Terra Elan McVoy, Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins, A Map of the Known World by Lisa Ann Sandell, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith, The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

Exclusive Bonus Content: In addition to loving this book, I loved all of the art it mentions and I loved hunting it down to see what all of the characters were really talking about. If you don’t feel like doing that, you can find what I believe is a comprehensive list of all of the art mentioned below. Click “more” to see it in no particular order.

Extraordinary: A Chick Lit Wednesday Review

Four years ago Phoebe Rothschild knew she wanted Mallory Tolliver as a friend–as her best friend. She was not sure why but she knew that Mallory with her tawdry, unsuitable clothes and her strange behavior would be a good friend to have, much better certainly than the friends Phoebe had previously found.

And Phoebe was right. For those four years at least.

Mallory always knew she needed to befriend the Rothschild girl. She knew what was required and expected of her by the Faerie Queen and the rest of her people. But still, for just a little while, she wanted what Phoebe had; she wanted the chance to be a normal teenaged girl.

Which is exactly what Mallory got. For those four years at least.

But time is running out: A debt must be repaid by an ordinary girl, a dangerously magnetic man will draw Phoebe to a perilous choice, and a friendship will be tested in Extraordinary (2010) by Nancy Werlin.

Extraordinary is quite impressive. Well-written, clever, and compelling this story will leave readers enchanted. Werlin’s looping prose and melodic tone are masterful and work wonderfully with this fairy tale styled story. The book combines a delightful plot with very arresting characters and, as the title might suggest, also offers an interesting commentary on what it really means to be ordinary (or extraordinary).

Phoebe is a really unique narrator. She has asthma and comes from a prominent Jewish family–both of which are important elements of the story. But the great thing is neither of those things are the main event in the story, they are just facets of Phoebe’s complex character. Phoebe also spends a lot of the story being beguiled or out and out tricked by other characters. The interesting thing about Werlin’s writing is that she conveys that while simultaneously evoking Phoebe’s own (often confusing) emotions.

This story is also unique in that, at its center, readers will find two friends instead of the romantic threads that are becoming so prevalent in fantasy books (and of course also spawned their own genre called “paranormal romance”).

There is definitely nothing ordinary about this book. In short, Extraordinary is a remarkable story about the transformative power of friendship.

Possible Pairings: White Cat by Holly Black, The War for the Oaks by Emma Bull, The Blue Girl by Charles De Lint, Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly, Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey, Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, The Demon Trapper’s Daughter by Jana Oliver, The Last of the High Kings by Kate Thompson, The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff

Exclusive Bonus Content: I quite like the cover of this book and the jacket design by Natalie C. Sousa. While not exactly a scene from a book it picks up on a lot of details about Phoebe’s appearance and captures the essence of the book while being quite interesting. Well done!
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Sound good? Find it on Amazon: Extraordinary

The Unwritten Rule: A Chick Lit Wednesday Review

Sarah has had a crush on Ryan for years. He’s smart, funny, and he understands her. He’s also really cute.

Sometimes it even seems like he might like her back, although Sarah can’t imagine why since she isn’t pretty or all that interesting–just ask her best friend Brianna.

Brianna is everything Sarah isn’t: beautiful, tall, and confident. She’s the perfect girl with the perfect life–if you don’t know about her parents (Sarah is the winner there).

Really, it makes sense for Ryan to date Brianna instead. They look good together, they like each other. It makes sense.

But then why does it feel like Sarah and Ryan are the ones with a special connection? Why does she still want him so badly?

Why does it seem like he wants her too?

Sarah liked him first, but it doesn’t matter. She still likes him. That doesn’t matter either.

At least, it’s not supposed to.

The only problem is, it does in The Unwritten Rule (2010) by Elizabeth Scott.

At 210 pages (hardcover) The Unwritten Rule is short and sweet and surprisingly original for a book that veers into familiar territory especially with a lot of the recent epic romances in young adult books. (I’m looking at you, Jacob. You too, Edward. Heck, Bella, I’ve got my on you too.)

I was excited for this book after reading Living Dead Girl which was kind of traumatic and just . . . bizarre. I kept hearing excellent things about Scott but I didn’t see any of it in that book because she lost me at child abduction. But I also heard that book was a bit of an anomaly so I was eager to give her another chance. That said, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book since my fellow blogger Nicole at Dog Ear was unimpressed by the book.

Weirdly, this is the second book I’ve recently discovered I kind of love only after finishing it and writing up the review.

A lot of the plot points here have been done before, but what really got me was the emotion Scott captures on every page. This book is potent. I was right there with Sarah. Her wanting Ryan, her eagerness to please Brianna, even her concern about her parents; it was all palpable to me as a reader. Sarah is torn up by her conflicting emotions and the fact that what’s best for her might not ultimately include Brianna.

The other great thing about The Unwritten Rule (despite what the cover might suggest) isn’t really a romance. Yes, there is romance. Yes, there is heartache. But really this is the story of a friendship and sometimes those stories are hard to find. While Sarah’s feelings for Ryan are a catalyst The Unwritten Rule is so much more than a love triangle or a romance. It’s a little snapshot into a normal girl’s life. It’s a character study. It’s an examination of a friendship.

I can’t even explain it that well, but Scott captures so much here that The Unwritten Rule is really a must read not so much for the story but for every thing else because so many elements come together here in such interesting ways.

Possible Pairings: Something Like Fate by Susane Colasanti, A Little Wanting Song by Cath Crowley, Fly on the Wall by E. Lockhart, Swoon by Nina Malkin, Stealing Henry by Carolyn MacCullough, Vibes by Amy Kathleen Ryan

Exclusive Bonus Content: Sarah was also a really interesting heroine. She sees herself as plain, the second fiddle to Brianna’s flashy electric guitar, a girl on the margins. But throughout the story we see her own interests (one word: sneakers), her delightfully routine yet quirky homelife (I also loved Sarah’s parents. Where was this book when I was writing on my Good Parents kick? Here’s a book that shows the best and worst of parental units in YA Lit all in one tiny package.) and her humor and loyalty. We also, tragically, watch Brianna constantly tear her down. I could go on but it becomes pretty obvious that Brianna sees Sarah more as a prop in the facade of her perfect life than as a true friend.

To anyone who read the book: Was anyone else torn up by the homecoming dance scene? I was crushed right along with Sarah.

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Sound good? Find it on Amazon: The Unwritten Rule

Jungle Crossing: A Chick Lit Wednesday Review

Thirteen-year-old Kat has dozens of reasons to skip her family’s summer vacation to hot, boring Mexico. She’ll miss mini-camp and lose her spot as part of Fiona’s Five (reason number 1) thereby completing ruining her chance at popularity and eighth grade in general (reason 33). Her family will drive her crazy (reasons 29 through 31).  And don’t think that’s just whining because Kat has tons of other, totally logical, reasons on her list including falling prey to bandits, the risk of flash flooding, heat stroke, dangerous strangers, and lung damaging jet fuel (reasons 8, 20, 24, 35 and 36) in Jungle Crossing (2009) by Sydney Salter.

Despite Kat’s helpful list, her parents and nine year old sister Barb couldn’t be happier with their Mexican adventure. Barb adjusts effortlessly to their new surroundings making friends with everyone she meets.

But no one seems to like Kat–not even Nando, the Mayan tour guide. Meanwhile, between scary eels, mean tour guides (reasons 39 and 40), and all of her other reasons, Kat is miserable. Even listening to Nando’s exciting legend about Muluc, an ancient Mayan girl facing danger, betrayal and untold sacrifice, can barely hold Kat’s interest.

Except, being a captive audience on the tour bus with Barb, Kat finds herself paying closer attention to Muluc’s story. Muluc didn’t have to worry about missing mini-camp or clinging to her tenuous spot in Fiona’s Five. The more Kat learns about Mexico and the ancient Mayans, the more she begins to wonder about her own life and what really matters. Could it be that, instead of being the worst vacation ever, going to Mexico will turn into one of Kat’s greatest adventures?

Jungle Crossing is a lot of fun. Kat is a younger narrator than a lot of the usual suspects in young adult novels, which makes for a slightly different (but equally enjoyable) perspective. Salter’s descriptions of Mexico were also amazing lending a travelogue feel to the book and transporting readers to Kat’s wonderful destinations. To her credit, Salter also tries to point out the inequities between the Mexico found by rich tourists and the harsher reality for locals like Nando.

Interspersed throughout Kat’s story readers will find Muluc’s story as “told” by Nando. Muluc’s story provides a slice of life from Ancient Maya and, eventually, becomes a benchmark for Kat as she tries to work out her own priorities in modern day Mexico.

Salter blends the two narratives together seamlessly so that, by the end of Jungle Crossing, moving between the two girl’s stories feels completely natural. Her writing of Kat’s narration is also pitch perfect moving from the voice of a whiny (possible) brat to that of a braver, happier, and fairly more enlightened girl by the end of the story.

Possible Pairings: The Sweetheart of Prosper County by Jill S. Alexander, North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley, Fly on the Wall by E. Lockhart, Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
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Sound good? Find it on Amazon: Jungle Crossing

The BMI Problem: A Linktastic Post

I recently read Body Drama (2007) by Nancy Redd (for my Young Adult Literature and Literacy) class which, in some ways, I did like. I think it’s really valuable because there is this weird stigma or shame about talking about your body–especially when you’re a girl.

(Although I don’t know that teens who are too timid to talk about such matters are likely to pick up this title. I am in many respects a prude and have been for many years. I know that I would have had the nerve to be seen reading this book no matter how valuable it is. Once an aunt bought me a copy of Our Bodies Ourselves for teen girls and I almost died of mortification just from looking at the book. I don’t think I ever opened it.)

What I didn’t like about the book was the focus on the Body Mass Index (BMI) as a way to gauge healthy weight because, frankly, BMI is bogus. The idea is that by plugging your height and weight into a chart you can find your BMI number and compare it to the range of “healthy” BMIs for people with your height and weight. The thing is, it doesn’t always work out as neatly as all that.

I didn’t know anything about BMI until I read about it in a New Yorker book review by Steven Shapin. I appreciated that Shapin took the time to debunk BMI as a means to measure healthy weights (according to BMI some famous athletes would be obese–while in peak playing condition).

Still, in a society that’s already obsessed with the idea of being thin it’s hard to hear that you’re overweight or obese. Even from a chart. I have never been underweight, but I imagine that would be an equally frustrating thing to hear from a chart. Especially one that is widely acknowledged as a flawed system of measurement.

Even with that knowledge, a strong/supportive family environment, and a fair amount of self-esteem, it took years to convince myself that the BMI was wrong and I was not obese. Honestly, I spent a lot of time thinking I was fat–and that’s with knowing full well that BMI isn’t always accurate and that there are all different healthy weights. It’s only been recently that I’ve started to understand that, while I’ll likely never be a size two or whatever, I am not that overweight. In an era where Marilyn Monroe–the sexiest sex symbol ever–would probably also be considered fat, I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way.

If you want to see what I mean about BMI, check out Kate Harding’s BMI project at http://kateharding.net/bmi-illustrated/. The project consists of a slide show showing real women and their BMI classification. I can guarantee that none of the labels will be what you expect.

Books like Body Drama are doing a lot to show that women come in all different shapes and sizes–all of which are normal. But until other measurements like BMI (and obviously unattainable expectations set forth by the media) are replaced with something more realistic, there will always be perfectly normal, healthy women stuck thinking there is something wrong with them.

Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last: A Chick Lit Wednesday Review

There are many reasons this review was posted late and backdated which I won’t get into here. Suffice to say I have been meaning to write this review for months but have been putting it off because I knew that once I wrote the review I would have to admit that Alice’s adventures were done–no small task let me assure you.

Onward . . .

Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last (2005) is the stunning conclusion to Susan Juby‘s debut trilogy (preceeded by Alice, I Think and its sequel Miss Smithers). You might recognize Juby’s name from the 2009 Edgar Awards where Getting the Girl was a nominee.

This installment opens with the first scene from Alice’s screenplay “Of Moose and Men”–a creative work loosely based on her own life. Excerpts of the screenplay are sprinkled throughout the novel. The writing is overwrought, exaggerated, and provides hysterical insight into Alice’s psyche throughout the story. In addition to being Alice’s latest career of choice, writing her screenplay also helps this sixteen-year-old heroine make sense of the chaos that has become her life.

At the beginning of the story, Alice’s boyfriend Goose is moving with his family to Glasgow for an entire year only to go away to university on the other end of Canada when he finally returns. Dealing with this heartbreak is bad enough on its own. Then Alice’s mother, a somewhat aggressive environmentalist, is thrown in jail as a result of her activist activities. That leaves Alice, her younger brother, and her father on their own. To say that this development leaves the family less than functional would be a vast understatement.

The one constant in Alice’s life seems, ironically, to be Death Lord Bob–her ineffectual therapist from the Teens in Transition (Not Trouble) Center in town. At least until he too is called away leaving Alice with the surly Ms. Deitrich who doesn’t seem to understand anything about Alice’s life let alone her highly evolved sense of style.

With their matriarch breadwinner in jail Alice and her father find themselves, for the first time, looking for gainful employment. Alice’s job search, and eventual employment, throw her into the paths of two brilliant characters: Wallace and Vince. Negotiating these new romantic waters, Alice finds herself caught between two equally charming suitors–one five years her senior, the other considerably her junior. The dilemma is equally difficult for readers who will likely be as attracted to these guys as Alice herself.

Throughout the series, readers are able to trace Alice’s evolution as a character. The girl we meet in this novel is very different from the Alice entering a traditional school (or a beauty pageant) for the first time. She is more mature, and in some ways  more responsible and engaged with the world at large. More than that, though, Alice’s true depth as a heroine is really apparent in this story as she not only works through but even rises above all of the (screw)balls life throws at her.

Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last doesn’t qualify as truly “realistic” fiction because of the humor and general madness that surrounds Alice. But Alice is still an utterly real and engaging character with a quirky sense of humor (and style) that will leave readers smiling.

(I’d recommend reading the entire trilogy in sequence to fully appreciate how awesome it is, but the stories do stand alone fairly well if you happen upon them out of order.)

Possible Pairings: Dramacon by Svetlana Chmakova, My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters by Sydney Salter, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Absolutely Maybe by Lisa Yee
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Sound good? Find it on Amazon: Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last

My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters: A Chick Lit Wednesday Review

Remember Jennifer Grey from Dirty Dancing? Back then she was a cute young actress with a rather distinct nose that gave her a unique face. In the 1990s she had a nose job that so altered her appearance that she was unrecognizable with the result that her career was arguably over. I found a site with two of the most unflattering pictures of Grey I have ever seen, but they illustrate my point. The change is so great that it’s hard to say what the nose job actually accomplished because the before and after photos look like different people.

While reading My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters (2009) by Sydney Salter, I kept thinking of one thing. That thing was Jennifer Grey’s nose job and how it totally changed her life in a not-so-great way.

For soon-to-be-senior Jory Michaels, it all comes down to her nose. Good old, Great-Grandpa Lessinger’s famous nose. The one Jory never grew into. The one that makes people ask her beautiful parents if Jory was adopted. It wouldn’t matter so much if Jory was some brilliant scholar who’d written six novels, created her own web-based business, and spoke fluent Chinese.

But Jory doesn’t do any of those things.

No matter how desperately she wants to be one of the beautiful people, or at least one of the smart people, or even just an athletic person; Jory is none of those things. Instead, she is the mediocre sheep in a family of beauty and talent. All, Jory is certain, because of her big nose–another outlier in a family with cute, small noses (except for Great-Grandpa Lessinger).

Like Jennifer Grey, Jory is convinced that a nose job will solve her problems and ultimately make her life better in every possible way. She will be smarter and prettier, her family will appreciate her the way they worship her little brother, and her gorgeous crush will finally realize that she is perfect for him. In other words, with a new nose, Jory will be as perfect as everyone else in her life.

To guarantee that she and “Super Schnoz” will part ways before September, Jory takes a summer job as a cake delivery person to fund her cosmetic surgery. She also begins a nice nose notebook to be ready for the big day.

It seems like everything is going Jory’s way until an unlikely acquaintance, an unfortunate driving mishap or two . . . or three, and other (natural) disasters force Jory to rethink everything she thought she knew about her nose, herself, and the perfect people she wanted so badly to emulate.

Set in Reno, Nevada My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters offers an interesting perspective on cosmetic surgery. Her hyperbolic fantasies about Super Schnoz and her new dream nose illustrate the irrational hopes Jory has pinned to the possibility of plastic surgery. At the same time, as the story progresses Jory begins to realize that there might be more to reinventing herself than restructuring her nose. That thread, set against the backdrop of friend-drama, and the social-climbing ambitions of her ever-dieting mother, gives this ostensibly quick read a fair amount of depth.

I enjoyed a lot of this book. At times the characters read younger than I would have expected for sixteen and seventeen-year-olds, but that likely says more about who I was at that age than anything else. Jory also reminded me a lot of Georgia Nicholson with her singular focus on boys but in a far less annoying way. I also had issue with the way friendships were treated. It must be the latin in me but I would have held a grudge a lot longer than Jory (and other characters in books I’ve read recently), but again that’s probably just me.

I loved Jory’s humor throughout the narrative, which made her lack of self-esteem at the beginning of the novel bearable. As part of a mother-daughter jewelery making duo, I also loved that beading came up in the story and was handled so realistically. At the start of the novel I will admit that I was not sure I could like Jory as a character, but by the end of the book I not only liked her, I was proud of her. My only disappointment was that the book didn’t go on a little longer so I could spend more time with this new and improved heroine. Beyond that, My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters is a clever, humorous book about how finding beauty sometimes involves more introspection than anything else.

Possible Pairings: Nothing But the Truth (and a Few White Lies) by Justina Chen Headley, Skinny by Donna Crooner, Fly on the Wall by E. Lockhart, Fix by Leslie Margolis
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Sound good? Find it on Amazon: My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters