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Someday My Printz Will Come
Inside Someday My Printz Will Come

Dodger

December 27, 2012 By 8 Comments

Dodger DodgerDodger, Terry Pratchett
Harper, October 2012
Reviewed from ARC

So, Dodger is a heartsong book for me. I realize it’s not perfect — certainly not with regard to accuracy, which we’ll get to in a moment — but it is almost perfectly put together, and is certainly enough of an exemplar of voice, style and thematic development that I hope the 2013 RealCommittee will take a serious look (or maybe a second look) at it. In view of all the great titles before us, I would be surprised to see it take the gold, but you’d have to be a real nasty geezer, to borrow a term from Dodger himself, to snipe at any accolades thrown Sir Terry’s way.   [Read more...]

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

Tiger Lily

November 27, 2012 By 3 Comments

tiger Tiger LilyTiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson
Harper Teen, July 2012
Reviewed from an ARC

As a quick reminder, we only have a little time before our Pyrite Printz nominations close, so if you have a book that knocks your socks off this year, you should head over to the comments to let us know!

But the real purpose of this post is to talk about Jodi Lynn Anderson’s Tiger Lily. We’ve got a retelling of Peter Pan that focuses on Tiger Lily. I pretty much snatched this out of Karyn’s hands when it came and haven’t given it back. I wrote about Tiger Lily way back when, mentioning that I wasn’t totally sure about it as a contenda, but that I really loved the way it played with the source material (more on that soon!). At this point, it’s got four starred reviews, so it’s an auto-contenda. [Read more...]

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

A Confusion of Princes (or, Khemri’s Clearly Excellent Adventure)

October 25, 2012 By 9 Comments

confusion princes 199x300 A Confusion of Princes (or, Khemris Clearly Excellent Adventure)
A Confusion of Princes, Garth Nix
Harper, May 2012
Reviewed from ARC

Let’s go back in time for a moment, to the heady golden days of science fiction as the place where sweeping stories examine the nature of humanity and also contain explosions and cool tech.

Are you with me?

Because A Confusion of Princes is a throwback in the best way possible.

This is pure space opera, which grows from adventure and Western roots. In this case, it’s space opera with a dash of coming of age and lots and lots of fun tech (only it’s tek here, and there’s a ton of it, each bit more inventive than the last), all of which adds up to the contemporary version of a Boy’s Own adventure.

[Read more...]

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