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Someday My Printz Will Come
Inside Someday My Printz Will Come

Dying to Know How this Is YA

October 19, 2012 By 13 Comments

dying to know you 198x300 Dying to Know How this Is YADying to Know You, Aidan Chambers
Amulet Books, April 2012
Reviewed from ARC

Look, Aidan Chambers is an immensely accomplished writer. He was one of the early Printz winners, people write critical essays about his books, and he plays quite impressively with form in many of his novels. He certainly has a a steady command of his language, and while there are aspects of Dying to Know You I don’t like, when it comes down to it a lot of this is stylistic quibbling and reader preference, which is not a Printz-worthy argument.

Not stylistic? The decision to have this ostensibly YA book narrated by a 75-year-old man.

75. Let that sink in for a moment.

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Filed Under: Contenders, Fiction Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Miseducation of Cameron Post

October 10, 2012 By 10 Comments

cameron post 197x300 The Miseducation of Cameron PostThe Miseducation of Cameron Post, Emily M. Danforth
Balzer + Bray, February 2012
Reviewed from ARC

There’s a lot to discuss here. A lot of win and a lot of flaw, really.

Let’s start with win, which is the writing.

The writing is mature, sophisticated, free of unnecessary embellishments. There are marks of the author’s MFA; there is a style of writing that always seems to have the fingerprints of advanced writing coursework and workshops all over it. Words that fall like pebbles, and ripple outward, although you can’t always tell why. Chapters that read like short stories, the kind you might find in The New Yorker. Language that is deceptively simple. MFA writing.

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I Think There Is No Contender

September 24, 2012 By 12 Comments

There Is No Dog I Think There Is No ContenderThere Is No Dog, Meg Rosoff
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, January 2012
Reviewed from ARC

Can we talk about There is No Dog?

Because either this book misses its mark by a mile or I’m missing something.

It’s by Meg Rosoff, author of the 2005 Printz award winner how i live now, a book that blows me away every. single. time I read it.

It’s garnered 4 stars (Booklist, Publisher’s Weekly, Horn Book, and Kirkus).

(Admittedly, 2012 seems to be the year of multiple stars, but it’s still nothing to sneeze about.)

And it’s a book that leaves me feeling like the butt of a joke not unlike the cosmic joke that is the centerpiece of the book.

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Filed Under: Contenders, Fiction Tagged With: , , , , ,
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