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I Love Him to Pieces, by Evonne Tsang (book review) – Baseball and zombies! My Boyfriend is a Monster series begins

May22
book cover of My Boyfriend is a Monster by Evonne Tsang art by Jenina Gorrison published by Graphic Universe

Romance, baseball, zombies… a typical high school day, right? This is such a great comic! Its subtitles – “My Date is a Dead Weight, or He Only Loves Me For my Brains” – hint at the tone of the whole book – really funny, a little creepy, a touch slapstick.

The writer and artist together have crafted a very plausible way for the “mutated Cordyceps fungus” to infect people and, uh, dissolve their brains. And it doesn’t take long for the “zombie fungus” to do its work… Hey, the CDC just released Emergency Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse on 5/16/11 – life imitates art?!

Tsang’s writing is humorous and serious in all the right places, while Gorrissen’s drawings make every character distinctive and real – both cartoonish and lifelike at the same time (except thoroughly dead, in the zombies’ cases).

Dicey is a hoot, playing baseball on the varsity team and giving the guys back what they dish out, while Jack is super-brainy, getting totally flustered when Dicey agrees to a date = you can just see him blush, even though the whole book is in black and white.

I was excited to see that I Love Him to Pieces was nominated for YALSA‘s 2012 “Great Graphic Novels for Teens” list. So nice that they confirmed my enthusiasm!
**kmm

Book info: I Love Him to Pieces (My Boyfriend is a Monster #1) / by Evonne Tsang; art by Janina Gorrissen. Graphic Universe/Lerner, 2011. [author interview] [artist’s website] [series site] [publisher site]

My Book Talk: Who knew that being “egg parents” together for a school project would lead to making a stand against the undead on a senior skip day?

The “zombie fungus” should never have reached Florida. But suddenly varsity baseball star Dicey and her super-scientific boyfriend Jack are in the middle of it, as zombies begin to take over their city.

Are Jack’s researcher parents safe in Mexico, at the meteorite crash site where the fungus was first discovered? Are Dicey’s dad and little brother safe across the bay? What about their fantasy-gaming friends and the baseball team at St. Petersburg High School? Just one bite from a zombie, and it’s all over…

Somehow, the stunningly detailed art in black and white makes the zombies scarier than a blood-and-guts palette would – fantastic! First in the graphic novel series “My Boyfriend is a Monster,” each book featuring a different writer/artist pairup and a different variety of monstrous boyfriend. (one of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)  Review copy  and cover art courtesy of the publisher through NetGalley.com.

Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card (book review) – Guest Post by Maggie Fanning

May19

Welcoming guest blogger Maggie who highlights a ‘forgotten gem’ of YA fiction – in this case, classic science fiction that may turn out to be closer to reality than we’d like to believe.
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Book info: Ender’s Game / by Orson Scott Card. Tor-Forge Books (Macmillan), 1994. [author’s website] [publisher site] First book in the Ender Quartet. [book trailer by a fan]

Maggie’s Recommendation: An oldie but a goodie, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (published in various story forms since 1977) takes place in a post-Cold War dystopia in which parents are discouraged from having more than two children. Disgracefully, Ender is a Third, but, although he should be the spare – the expendable one – he is selected by the powers that be to be trained on a space station orbiting Earth. He is put through rigorous, even abusive, combat training which alienates him from the other recruits on board the station. His final “training exercise” requires him to command a fleet of space ships launched in an offensive against an alien home world – such a realistic videogame.

Card did not first intend to write a young adult novel, but his themes reach out to a much wider audience than he ever intended to address. In his acceptance speech for the Margaret A. Edwards Award, he admits, “Ender’s Game was written with no concessions to young readers. My protagonists were children, but the book was definitely not aimed at kids” (Card, “Margaret” 15). Nevertheless, he writes, “Young readers… are… deeply inside Ender’s character. They still live in a world largely (or, with younger readers, entirely) shaped by the adults around them. Ender’s attitude is revelatory to them” (Card, “Margaret” 17).

Although some see Ender’s Game as dated by its post-Cold War binaries of East and West – and subsequently Human and Alien – this novel, like many by Card, has a long lasting appeal to readers of all ages.

Works Mentioned
Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Game. New York: Tor, 1991.
—. “Margaret A. Edwards Award Acceptance Speech.” Young Adult Library Services (Fall 2008): 14-18.

Guest Blogger Bio: L. Maggie Fanning, M.A. English professor, creative writer, and professional editor. Respond to my reflections at http://thehappybibliophile.blogspot.com or at fanning.editor@gmail.com.

Across the Universe, by Beth Revis (book review) – space travel, lies, love

May4

book cover of Across the Univers by Beth Revis published by RazorbillCan the folks in charge really control every bit of what people learn and know?
Can history be rewritten so completely that the truth will never be discovered?

Take a little trip with this book that moves our fear of the different to a whole ‘nother level.

And “May the Fourth be with you” – it’s Star Wars Day!
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Book info: Across the Universe /Beth Revis. Razorbill (Penguin), 2011.  [author’s website] [publisher website] [book website] [book trailer]

My Recommendation: Frozen for the 300-year space journey to a new Earth with her scientist parents – what will it really be like, Amy wonders. Centuries pass on the spaceship Godspeed for the placid farmers on the Feeder level and stolid techs on the Shipper level, all 20 or 40 or 60 years old, each “gen” all born the same year following the Season of mating, same color skin, same color hair, same color eyes.

Elder was born a dozen years earlier than his gen, so that his training as their leader will be complete when he becomes Eldest. Because the Elder before him died early, he is trained by crotchety Eldest who should have already retired and dislikes the teenager’s questions. Life aboard ship requires harmony and working together and strong leadership and no individuality, says Eldest.

Why didn’t he tell Elder about the lower level below the Feeder farm blocks, a level filled with frozen people waiting to be reanimated when they reach Centauri-Earth? That level’s alarms sound as a Frozen’s cryo is turned off, and a pale-skinned, red-haired teenage girl wakes up. Amy is stunned to find that her parents aren’t awake, that the ship is decades away from landing, that she’s trapped in this tiny world with people who know only a sanitized version of Earth’s history, one that reinforces uniformity and follows a strong leader without questions.

Suddenly other cryos are turned off with no alarms sounding, and experts from the past are dead, sent through the hatch into the vacuum of space by Eldest like any other dead bodies.

Who is killing the cryos?
Are the crazy people in the hospital the only sane ones on Godspeed? Will Amy ever talk to her parents again?
Will the ship ever reach its destination?

A great space thriller, with plenty of questions about ethics, leadership, and humanity. (one of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.