Tween Tuesday: 3 Willows

3 WILLOWS

Ann Brashares

A traveling-pants-esque novel for younger girls, 3 WILLOWS has a promising premise. Three girls (Jo, Polly, and Ama) became best friends on a fateful day in third grade when their parents forgot to pick them up from school. For years the girls were incredibly close, but by the end of eighth grade (when the book picks up), the three have drifted apart. Jo's en route to being high school royalty, Ama's well on her way to following in the footsteps of her Princeton-bound older sister, meanwhile Polly seems to be the only one holding on to the friendship both other girls have given up on. Unlike the girls with the magic pants, these three have already drifted apart and this book is much more about them each coming to their own realization over the summer before high school -- who they are, who their friends are, and what's truly important to them.

I had hopes for this book, I admit, because Ann Brashares original series is so good, so inspired. This offshoot, however, seems to lack that spark of magic inherent in the traveling pants series. The characters here, despite their very different stories, roles, and personalities, don't seem all that defined. Jo has the most depth, with the backstory of her dead brother and parents going through a separation, but even with this the three girls' voices mostly tend to blend into one. And though there are a few stand-out relationships (Jo's summer romance has a certain amount of spark, as does Polly's relationship with her mother towards the end of the book), for the most part nothing here really jumps out.

This book does bring back some of our old favorites from the Traveling Pants series (most notably Effie, in a less-than-stellar role for a character I utterly love) and pays homage to the sisterhood in a few ways I wasn't expecting, but it always feels a bit tacked-on. Like a spin-off television show that failed to deliver on its promises.

This dull, overall feeling of meh carries over into the rest of the novel. The book definitely isn't what I'd call "bad" in any way, but it's also not so good. It just sort of is. An enjoyable enough read, especially since it goes quickly, but not a title to put at the top of your list. Young girls (and the rest of us) would be much better of reading (or rereading) the Traveling Pants series.

Tween Tuesday: The Limit

THE LIMIT

Kristen Landon

In this middle grade dystopian novel, we meet Matt. A young, brilliant math geek whose not-so-brilliant parents have gone over their "limit" -- the government-imposed debt limit. What this means for Matt is that he's sent away to a workhouse to help pay off the debt until his family gets back under the limit. What he's expecting to be a child slave camp is actually pretty cushy; he tests into the Top Floor, which is reserved for the smartest kids who do the most difficult work, and suddenly he has everything he could want. New clothes and gadgets are just a click away and he's free to spend most of his time playing sports or video games with his fellow Top Floors. But, as with every dystopia, all is not as it seems. Children on the other floors are having massive headaches, sometimes even seizures, and when his own sister ends up suffering a seizure when she arrives at the workhouse, he becomes convinced that something bad is going on around him. This, along with the fact that he's forbidden to leave the top floor or go outside, pushes Matt to risk everything to discover what's really happening in the workhouse.

This was an enjoyable and interesting book, however I did have some issues with it. The main problem I had was that it took a long time to really get going -- it was well past the 50 page mark before I felt like I had to finish it. Page 137 to be exact, which is nearly halfway through the book. There's a lot of set up here that I doubt many kids would sit through (just like I almost didn't). The characters are likable however, as with much else in this book, it took a long time to get to know them. For much of the book I wasn't sure who, aside from Matt, the main characters really were, and though the relationships are believable and well written, I did feel a lack of connection since everything exciting happened so late in the book. To be honest, pacing was an issue throughout (which knocked major points off of what was an otherwise very interesting and captivating plot), with the first half of the book nearly at a stand-still and the ending coming very quickly, skipping a few scenes I would have loved to see, and going right into what read like an epilogue.

There's a clear message of delayed gratification and living within your means here, although it seemed out of place since that wasn't quite the evil badness that these Matt and his friends were up against. Also, as much as I believe that life lessons can be woven into books well, this one seemed a bit heavy-handed in its message that seemed more fit for teenagers and adults than children in the first place -- though I could be wrong on that. Still, as unsure as I was of the message, the plot of this book had me hooked once it finally got going, and I admit that I read a few pages during school when I really should have been paying attention to class instead. In the end, despite the pacing problems it had, I'm so glad I read this book because I really did enjoy it, and while I wouldn't recommend it for reluctant readers, in some ways it reminds me of the SHADOW CHILDREN series form years back, and I think dystopian fans will be glad they read it.

Tween Tuesday: Mary Anne Saves the Day (A Graphic Novel)

Since my blog focuses mainly on YA, though I do read a few MG books and would love to talk about them also, I'm going to be participating in GreenBeanTeenQueen's Tween Tuesday whenever I have a Middle Grade novel I want to talk about.

For my first Tween Tuesday post, I'll be talking about MARY ANNE SAVES THE DAY: A GRAPHIC NOVEL. This is the updated, graphic novel version of one of the first books in the Baby-Sitters Club series. And since it doesn't fit into my normal review system so well (one of the negatives of having such a strict reviewing system I suppose) I'm going to do something a little different this time and not stick to the typical rubric.

This book is a short, cute read. The main conflict here is the four members of the Baby-Sitters Club getting in a huge fight that causes them to avoid each other in school and take turns answering the phone at club meetings so that they don't all have to attend. While separated from her friends, shy Mary Anne meets Dawn Schafer, a new girl in school who just moved from California. The girls form a fast friendship and discover their parents actually knew each other in high school. Though the original story of this book is decades old, I'm still loathe to give anything away to readers who maybe haven't read it and want to read the graphic novel adaption. But suffice to say, Mary Anne is put in some sticky situations and forced to make some mature decisions without the help of her friends and at the same time makes a new friend for possibly the first time in her life.

The pictures in this book are absolutely adorable and the essence of the girls (especially Mary Anne, with her hair in two braids) seems to be captured very well. I did find myself wishing that Claudia's outfits were a bit wilder, but it's possible that she was still relatively tame in those early books. The technology has also been updated, with Mary Anne surprised that Dawn has a DVD player in her room (as opposed to the VCR player that it was in the original book). While these changes jarred me a little as an original reader of the series, they do make sense for an updated story and obviously it wouldn't bother younger readers.

One of the best things about this adaption is that the whole "chapter 2" is skipped. Chapter 2, for anyone who doesn't know, was the chapter in BSC novels set aside for introducing, in completely formulaic fashion and generally with nearly the exact same wordage for each book, the club and its members. Losing that was wonderful and it makes the story move so much quicker and smoother.

I definitely recommend this for pre-teen and young teen girls, especially reluctant readers or others who might be captured by the comic-book format. Also older readers might want to flip through this one; it's a nice, fresh update of the books we love so much and I found myself wishing more of the books (instead of just the first four) were going to be adapted into graphic novels.