Book Review: Trigger by Susan Vaught

Book: Trigger
Author: Susan Vaught
Published: 2006

Jersey Hatch is coming home. After a traumatic brain injury and more than a year in four different hospitals, he’s being cut loose to survive in the real world. It won’t be easy. He is no longer the brilliant, athletic boy he was before. His whole left side is well-nigh useless, and his patched-up brain now has as at least as many misfires as good connections. But he’s alive.

Now Jersey has to make his way through the wreckage of his life. With no memory of the year before the injury, he must figure out for himself why his former best friend hates him, how to make it through a normal schoolday, and what to do about his rapidly imploding family.

But most of all, Jersey Hatch has to figure out why he shot himself in the head.

Vaught brings her real-life experience as a neuropsychologist to this story of a boy attempting to reconstruct himself in the ruins of who he was before. But it’s not at all clinical or jargony. Vaught gives the neurology a miss and concentrates on an intimate recounting of Jersey’s struggles, physical, cognitive, and emotional. When he blurts out weird, fragmented words, the stream of conciousness that preceded it shows you how he got there and what he really means.

Personally I could have wished we’d gotten to know J.B. (Jersey Before) a little better. But the effect of the perfunctory explanation we do get is to underline the thundering pointlessness of his reasonings for what he did. At the same time, there is no moral, no preaching, just an honest exploration of redemption, forgiveness, and whether either is even possible.

Books I'm Thankful For

It's Thanksgiving Eve, and tomorrow I will board a plane to see my parents. Together, my mom and I will attempt to break the land-speed record for related women driving each other up the wall. Should be fun.

In the spirit of the season, here are some books I'm grateful that I got to read this year:

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
Perfect You by Elizabeth Scott
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Boy Toy by Barry Lyga
Swimming With the Sharks by Debbie Reid Fischer
Impossible by Nancy Werlin
Ten Cents a Dance by Christine Fletcher
Nothing by Robin Friedman
Good Enough by Paula Yoo
Mexican WhiteBoy by Matt de la Peña
. . . and many others.

They're not comfortable, light reads, but each one took me on a trip into someone's skin and changed me a little bit.

I'm also thankful for this community of bloggers that keeps me informed of all the latest stuff (and their opinions thereof), as well as the warm sense of community.

Which books are you grateful for? Oh, hell, let's just call this a meme and pass it around the kidlitosphere.

PS I would link them, but it's late, I'm exhausted, and I still have to pack. Maybe tomorrow.

Real Life Stuff

So remember how I said in my Comments Challenge wrap-up post that real life was happening to me? It's happening with a vengeance.

I'm moving to another state in three weeks, so this blog may be rather sporadic. I don't have any reviews (yeah, you noticed that too, did you?) but I'll try to post interesting news bits I find. I just won't be able to do it daily.

Give it about a month and I'll be back. In the meantime, leave me some book suggestions in the comments--something light and entertaining that will give me respite from packing and canceling gas bills and trying to find apartments online and and and . . .

Comment Challenge

So how did you do on the Comment Challenge, Bibliovore?

Mumble-mumble.

What? I can't heeeearr you!

Pretty darn awful and you know it, inner self!

My first few days were good. I was rackin' up the comments, having interesting and insightful conversations, and seeing the same happen on my blog. Then things started to taper off. I would mark posts to comment later and never get back to them. The comment I made went from fiveish to oneish to noneish. Pretty fast actually.

In my own defense, some real-life stuff was happening, but I still wish that I'd been able to keep up my commenting better. So this is going to be my New Year's resolution (and yes, I know New Year's is a month and a half away, but that dang real life is still getting in the way! More on that in another post.) I want to make comments every day. Notice I'm not giving a number. Some days, even one "Yeah, you go!" comment might be an effort. But I do want to put myself in the conversation, because I liked it there.

Thanks for putting this together, MotherReader and Lee! I think we should do it every year, just like the 48-hour book challenge. It's a great way of discovering new blogs, making new friends, and getting the happies when we get comments.

And next year maybe I'll actually make it the whole three weeks.

Braaaaaaains

Here's an article from PW on the new supernatural/horror trend in YA lit, traceable, of course, to the popularity of Twilight. Take-home message?

Alessandra Balzer, co-publisher of Balzer & Bray at HarperCollins, who edited Generation Dead while at Hyperion, reflected on the category's current popularity. “What recent authors have done is reinvent the genre,” she said. “Twilight took vampires—which are scary—and made them sexy. In Generation Dead, you have an allegory about discrimination, which makes zombies fascinating. These creatures provide great allegories for the issues teens face in their lives, romances and school.”

So . . . business as usual, right?

Illustrating with Water with First Second

Fuse #8 put this up on her Sunday videos last Sunday. I watched my head cocked to one side at an ever-increasing angle, like one of those "Baroo?" dogs on Cute Overload. Then I got to 0:49 and shrieked, "Wow!!" Click play to see why.

The Possibilities of Donna Freitas

Donna Freitas plus Sara Zarr equals interview! There's lots of good stuff, and here's a free sample:

SZ: Why do you think there are so few mainstream YA books that feature characters who have a positive relationship with their religious faith and/or traditions?

DF: That’s a great question and one I feel I have to be careful about answering—though I am going to be honest. As a professor of religion, I am well aware how uncomfortable talk of religion is to many people, never mind an encounter with a person who is practicing in a tradition. . . . I think this situation is unfortunate because so many teens do practice a faith tradition and not everyone is disaffected. I’m not sure we (YA authors) do such a good job representing these teens and this aspect of their lives. Then also, to me, religion really can be lighthearted and filled with life and comedy.

Hurray Donna! This is exactly why I enjoyed The Possibilities of Sainthood so much.

I got my grubby little paws on the book at the ALA conference this summer, and this is how: I walked by some MP3 audio company, and they had a big, beautiful poster of the cover. I screeched to a halt and took a mental note of that book, knowing that I was gonna hafta read it. All axioms aside, I love a great cover. Then I actually found an ARC at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux's booth, and leaped on it like a hungry wolf. I think I scared the publisher's rep. Sorry 'bout that.

When I read it, I was delighted to see that the Catholic content wasn't played for mockery or shown to be hollow and meaningless, but that Antonia Lucia Labella is very strong and joyful in her faith. It was the second book I'd read in about a week's time with Catholic content (the other being Kimberly Brubaker Bradley's Leap of Faith.) At the same time, it was a completely different story--much more like chick lit, but still showing a girl who drew strength and guidance from her beliefs without being betrayed by them or being a mindless sheep.

Identity is comprised of many, many things for teens: sexuality, politics, fashion, music, sports . . . the list goes on and on. Faith and religion (similar but not identical concepts) are just as much a part of that list, and I hope to see more novels that address that in a variety of tones.

Hero Takes the Small Screen!

Okay, so 'member how I was all excited around Comic Con time about Stan Lee partnering up with Perry Moore for something to do with the latter's excelente YA novel, Hero? But I made with the snark cuz the announcement was so vague?

A few more details from MTV.com:

According to Variety, Showtime and Stan Lee are developing Perry Moore’s novel “Hero” into an hour long series.

Yippee! I have a couple of Showtime shows on my regular TV rotation right now, so I'm very excited to see what they'll do with this. I just hope they remember the YA roots.

Congratulations Judy Blundell!

She just won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature for What I Saw and How I Lied. Hurray!

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Cover

I've heard a lot of love lately for The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, including shiny sticker-type love. Ness picked up the UK's Teenage Booktrust Prize 2008 just a couple of days ago. From the chair of judges:

The Knife Of Never Letting Go made the judges laugh, cry and debate its contents with passion; a striking mixture of thriller, science fiction and literary tour de force, it's influenced by writers as diverse as Laurence Sterne and Ursula le Guin, and should appeal to a wide readership.

My question for those of you who've already read it--do you agree?

Much Ado About Nothing

Octavian Nothing, that is, when Publisher's Weekly interviews M.T. Anderson.

I swear to y'all I am not getting a kickback for linking to PW (like they even notice any traffic I send their way; pfsh!), there's just been good stuff lately, or at least comment-worthy stuff.

I read The Pox Party (Octavian Nothing 1) and got an ARC of The Kingdom on the Waves (Octavian Nothing 2) at BEA in May. My reading habits being what they are, I didn't get to it until November. I finished it November 4th, in fact. In the evening, after the news spread throughout the land. Wow.

I don't plan stuff like this. Sometimes this just happens, like the day that Meg Cabot's Valentine Princess turned up at the top of my queue being, actually, Valentine's Day.

Anyway, enough about me. Interview. Quotage of note:

I’ve heard from one or two adults saying, “Are you sure this is appropriate for kids?,” but I think people don’t always give teens credit for how well they read. And not just looking up words they don’t know—they skip over words they don’t know, just like adults do. . . . And consider that kids read fantasy books, which in many cases have invented vocabulary. . . . Kids who are reading that are building a language in their heads. There’s no real cognitive difference. I think kids are excited by language, and they’re not always given credit for that.

Interesting. I have to admit that's one of the things that stopped me from booktalking as widely as I might have, wondering whether the 18th century prose would block them. He says elsewhere, though, that he has kids of 11 or 12 reading this book.

Do they get every subtle shading, every issue that's touched upon? Probably not. But maybe this is where they can start to grapple with them.

Ellen Emerson White Chat

Remember how much I loved Long May She Reign? It's the book of the month all month over at Readergirlz. Plus, Ellen Emerson White will be chattin' it up at the Readergirlz chat room tomorrow night at 9 pm Eastern (that's 6 pm Pacific). Don't miss it!

The Winter Blog Tour is Blasting Through!

As it does every year around this time, the annual Winter Blog Blast Tour is upon us. Yowza. Check out this lineup, put together by Chasing Ray's Colleen Mondor:

Monday

Lewis Buzbee at Chasing Ray
Louis Sachar at Fuse Number 8
Laurel Snyder at Miss Erin
Courtney Summers at Bildungsroman
Elizabeth Wein at Finding Wonderland
Susan Kulkin at The YA YA YAs

Tuesday

Ellen Dalow at Chasing Ray
Tony DiTerlizzi at Miss Erin
Melissa Walker at Hip Writer Mama
Luisa Plaja at Bildungsroman
DM Cornish at Finding Wonderland
LJ Smith at The YA YA YAs
Kathleen Duey at Bookshelves of Doom

Wednesday

Ellen Klages at Fuse Number 8
Emily Jenkins at Wrting and Ruminating
Ally Carter at Miss Erin
Mark Peter Hughes at Hip Writer Mama
Sarah Darer Littman at Bildungsroman
MT Anderson at Finding Wonderland
Mitali Perkins at Mother Reader

Thursday

Martin Millar at Chasing Ray
John Green at Writing and Ruminating
Beth Kephart at Hip Writer Mama
Emily Ecton at Bildungsroman
John David Anderson at Finding Wonderland
Brandon Mull at The YA YA YAs
Lisa Papademetriou at Mother Reader

Friday

Mayra Lazara Dole at Chasing Ray
Francis Rourke Dowell at Fuse Number 8
J Patrick Lewis at Writing and Ruminating
Wendy Mass at Hip Writer Mama
Lisa Ann Sandell at Bildungsroman
Caroline Hickey/Sara Lewis Holmes at Mother Reader
A.S. King at Bookshelves of Doom
Emily Wing Smith at Interactive Reader

Good thing I didn't need a life this week.

More Twilight Bashing

Go see Hijinks Ensue from a few days ago and see why I laughed helplessly for about thirty seconds straight.

I am a bad, bad person.

Holy Graphic Novels, Batman!

Lisa Chellman posted about a comics workshop she attended at her library (lucky!). It featured someone talking about the process of writing comics, and as I read her notes, I thought, "My, my, how intriguing! This is certainly something to keep in mind as I read graphic novels!" (Apparently my inner thoughts are those of a grandma. Next, I will bake mental cookies.)

Now, current graphic novels have diverged from the kind of 22-page comic books that this guy writes, but many of the things he says regarding the storytelling (dialogue-wise and artistically) still have weight in GNs. Go take a look.

Buy Books for the Holidays!

I got this one from Jen Robinson's blog. Apparently, there's a new initiative in town, and it's called Buy Books for the Holidays. I'm behind this, and here's why:

1. Books are easy to wrap. Square or rectangle. Done and done-r.

2. When wrapped, the little stinkers can tell it's a book, but which one? Which one?!? No amount of rattling will give the title away. The suspense will make them crazy, which we all know is the best part of the holiday.

3. One-stop shopping, baby, be it Amazon, B&N, Powell's, favorite indie store that smells like cats and incense. With the price of gas, who wants to go driving all over Hell's half-acre for that elusive red shirt that your teenager wants?

4. The start of a lifelong addiction. Get 'em hooked early, and the next thing you know they're knocking on the library windows at 9:59 am, desperate for their lit fix. Muahahahaha.

Are you giving books for the holidays?

Kirkus Reviews Chimes In

More best-ofs, this time from Kirkus. I like the format of this list, which isn't just a title list but also includes Kirkus's review, plus suggested ages. A lot of it does seem to be ads, though. Oh well . . . take a look.

Fair warning, though: if you have a slow Internet solution, I suggest making a sandwich and maybe a chocolate layer cake while you wait for this 24 page pdf to download. Egad.

Publisher's Weekly Thinks You Should Read These Books

. . . and as it so happens, I mostly agree with them. C'mon, guys, the list includes Kristin Cashore's Graceling, Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, and Elise Broach's Masterpiece, among other gems. Red hot diggity. Go see the rest of the list and tell me what you liked. Scroll all the way to the bottom for the under-18 stuff.

As I moaned in my post over at Kid Tested, Librarian Approved, PW doesn't seem to differentiate much in children's fiction, even when they get down to the nitty-gritty in grown-up stuff. I mean, seriously, they have a subsection for "Religious Fiction" and then a total YA book like The Hunger Games is next to Jeannie Birdsall's delightful but definitely kid's The Penderwicks on Gardam Street. Geez, guys.

A Letter From the Audience

Publisher's Weekly had a great article in their November 10th issue from an 8th grade boy, telling us all in no uncertain terms what he wants in a book. No sparkly vampires, no high-falutin' language, and no condescension. But read the article anyway, because it's concise, witty, and right to the point. Good going, Max.

It's good for publishers to hear, and it's also good for us librarian types. Of all people, we're going to know the books they're looking for.

The Knucklehead Makes a Book Trailer

I enjoyed the heck out of Knucklehead, the mostly true, mostly autobiographical collection of growing-up tales from Jon Scieszka. I also enjoyed the heck out of this trailer for it:

Knucklehead featuring Jon Scieszka from Jon Scieszka on Vimeo.

Thanks to Fuse #8 for finding it.