Alice, I Think (and sequels), by Susan Juby

 October became Canadian teen trilogy month for me.  Susan Juby's informative and sarcastically funny Nice Recovery inspired me to read her Alice series, set in Smithers, Juby's hometown in Northern BC.

Alice took me a little time to warm up to.  I spent the first half of Alice, I Think gritting my teeth at her intense self-centredness and wanting to shake some sense into her.  Part of my pain may have been influenced by the recognition that at age fifteen I was probably only a little less selfish and reactive than her.

Alice cares too much about looking good, but has the most bizarre fashion sense that anyone in her town has ever seen.  She has nothing in the way of social skills, which she blames on spending most of her life homeschooled, but may have as much to do with her near-complete absence of empathy.  Alice has beyond-terrible judgement. She stalks customers at her workplace (convinced they're all shoplifters), freezes up when physically attacked by a drunken teen delinquent, and tells half-truths to her therapist so he doesn't have a breakdown like the last one did.

By the end of Alice, I Think, I'd laughed hard enough and been sufficiently charmed to read the rest of the series.  Miss Smithers, my favourite of the three, sees Alice competing in the local pageant and sabotaging herself at all turns.  She spends most of her clothing-allowance for the contest on a pair of leather pants, leaving her almost nothing to cobble together the rest of her outfits.  She publishes (somewhat unintentionally) scathing articles about friends, family, and fellow contestants in her zine.  And sadly, with a combination of neglect and unreasonable demands, she chases away her endearingly awkward boyfriend. Alice Macleod, Realist at Last, continues with more romantic foibles, false representations to employers, and failure to complete a single act of housework.

All three books end fairly abruptly, but as the stories are character rather than plot-centric, I didn't mind too much.  I would have liked to know a little more about what was happening with other characters, but this is Alice's diary, and Alice doesn't care enough to talk too long about anyone else.  Sigh.  I laughed enough that I'll forgive her. 

Airborn, Skybreaker, and Starclimber, by Kenneth Oppel

Kenneth Oppel is a superstar of Canadian teen lit.  I'd been feeling terribly neglectful for failing to read his popular, multi-award winning steampunk series, so a couple of weeks ago I set about reading all three.

Airborn, Skybreaker, and Starclimber are adventure stories with elements of survival, fantasy, and (very) light romance.  Matt Cruse, a cabinboy when we meet him, is a resourceful, hardworking, and thoughtful fellow.  Confident without arrogance and eminently capable, he saves the day on more than one occasion.

In Airborn, I found Matt to be a little too perfect, but Oppel takes him out of his comfort zone in the sequels and bestows him with a few human flaws.  His friend Kate De Vries is a  bookish-but-tough girl born into priviledge and out to prove herself in a man's world.  In other words, she's a little cliche, especially when paired against Matt's poor working-class upbringing.  Nevertheless, they're an enjoyable pair to read about, and contribute to the series' appeal to both male and female readers. 

Steampunk elements are introduced mostly as background to the story, providing cultural context or technological challenges.  Each book sees Matt and Kate aboard a different kind of air or spacecraft with structures and characteristics that our own world has never seen.

 My library shelves this series in the teen section, but the story is light enough that I'd happily recommend it to strong readers in elementary school.

Nice Recovery, by Susan Juby

Knowing  Susan Juby only as an award-winning author of teen fiction, I was more than a little surprised to hear that she'd written a memoir about her teen alcoholism and subsequent recovery at age 20.  I was intrigued enough to check out her talk at a local literary festival, and was terribly impressed by her sarcastic humour and strength.

Nice Recovery is funny, insightful, and a little grim.   Juby doesn't tell the whole tale of what was happening around her, but respecting the privacy of family and friends,  focuses on her own experiences.  As a former blackout drunk she also acknowledges that her memory is a little unreliable in the details. Nevertheless, she remembers the projectile vomiting, fistfights, and teenaged self-centredness well enough.  This is no self-aggrandizing saga of golden days, and Juby's grounded honesty serves the story well.

My library files this book in both the adult and teen sections, but I'd be selective about which teens I'd recommend it to.  It's a compelling read, but it is aimed at the adult reader.  Juby is looking back on an anxious, self-destructive, and self-loathing time in her life from a very adult perspective that would have been impossible before she entered recovery.

Would You, by Marthe Jocelyn

I rarely read realistic fiction, but this came highly recommended by another librarian. 

For Natalie and her friends, summer revolves around their part-time jobs and evenings sneaking swims in backyard pools around their town.  In September, Natalie's sister Claire will be moving away to university, but for now, it's life as usual.  Until it's not.  A car accident throws Natalie's life upside down and holds her whole family in limbo. 

Natalie's narrative voice is unique and realistic.  She's not a perfect protagonist.  She and her friends don't follow all the rules, but they aren't too bad either.  They're bored teens in a small town or suburb.  Nobody is prepared to face losing someone they love, and their confused and disoriented upset rings true.

The Maze Runner, by James Dashner

The Maze Runner belongs to the current batch of dystopian teen trilogies.  The second volume, The Scorch Trials, hits the bookstores tomorrow.  The book is populated almost entirely by male characters, which is a contrast to popular female-fronted dystopias such as The Hunger Games and Incarceron.

I found the story less gripping than others of the genre.  The boys are trapped within a huge shifting maze and remember nothing of their previous lives except their names.  They are evidently being manipulated by someone, but there isn't much information to go by.  The book attempts to convey high emotion (the protagonist spends much of the book in abject terror), but the characters aren't particularly interesting and I didn't buy in to the premise.

Jack of Fables: Turning Pages, by Bill Willingham

This is the volume that I skipped because my library was slow to order it.  Now the plot of Volume 6 makes so much more sense! 

I still don't like Jack nearly as much as the parent series, Fables, but this is the best volume I can remember reading.  Why?  There is less Jack in this arc and more of everybody else.  The first half focuses on Bigby Wolf, then sheriff of Fabletown,  and the second half on the Page Sisters, three smart, tough sometime-villains and "librarians" of the Golden Boughs Retirement Village. 

The Sandman: The Dream Hunters by Neil Gaiman & P. Craig Russell

An adaptation of an earlier text (previously released as an illustrated book), The Dream Hunters is a stand-alone story in the world of The Sandman.  It is an original story told in the style of a folktale in which a young Japanese monk earns the love and protection of a fox spirit.

I prefer the original Sandman comics to standalone stories or adaptations by other authors, but this is a gentle, pleasant tale.  The Sandman character himself is softened, which lightens the story and feels appropriate to the folktale style.

Creature and Bird by Andrew Zuckerman

These stunning collections of studio photography feature a wide range of animal subjects brought into sharp focus against a seamless white background.

A selection of photos from Creature were later featured in the alphabet book Creature ABC.  While the variety in Creature is greater, this is one brick of a book, and I appreciate the portability and affordability of the abbreviated children's version.  It is exciting without being overwhelming, as Creature is in danger of being.

Bird brings every feather into focus and every talon into sharp view.  Infinitely varied, the birds in this book are in turn alienating, inviting, ethereal and predatory.  Having seen some of the photos from Creature before, I found Bird to be more of a revelation.  I had forgotten or had not known how strange some birds can be, or the odd bald spots and patterns of feathers on species that I had thought I knew.

My favourite images capture the wide round eyes and marionette posture of the Secretary Bird, which bring nothing to mind so much as a fantastically spindly muppet.

Smile, by Raina Telgemeier

Smile is an adventure in orthodontics.  The author chronicles the pre-teen trauma of knocking out her front teeth and the dental procedures that followed over the next few years.  This is a warm, lighthearted read with some social awkwardness and a few cringe-worthy moments.  The illustrations are colourful and inviting, and the story has more substance than most graphic novels (or non-fiction) for children.