Wherein I should be reading books for a conference but get distracted by a bunch of comics for teens and kids that I just happened to see on the shelf:

Unicorn on a Roll by Dana Simpson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars

Not quite as good as the first collection, but still adorable and fun. I love this series!!!

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This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. I think a lot of us have a “one summer” that we can remember. Maybe not quite as dramatic as this one, but I do remember having those crushes, the mystery of what being “older” was all about, and straddling that line between wanting to be a kid and wanting to be a teen. Tamaki and Tamaki capture it all perfectly.

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Storm Vol. 1: Make it Rain by Greg Pak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I always think of Storm as being a side character, usually shoved into the back of scenes in the movies, the writers never sure how to handle her powers. I mean, she can fly and control the weather – she could destroy us all pretty quickly. It was great to read a comic with her at the CENTER of the attention. This was a great start to the series and I am looking forward to reading more. She has been underutilized as a character for far too long.

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Sunny Side Up by Jennifer L. Holm
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was such a surprise on so many levels. What I thought was going to be a little summer vacation story turned out to be a much more powerful semi-biography. Holm & Holm capture the innocence and confusion of being a child with a family member who has a substance abuse problem.

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Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I listened to this book because I knew there was no way I could read it. It falls to far into the angst/trauma area of YA Lit that I tend to not read. But I am facilitating at a conference so I had to read it so I could help with the discussion.

My biggest complaint is that the whole “letter” thing, which wore thin by the end. Plus, sequences when she was, say, black out drunk…how exactly did she write that all out later? It just didn’t work and about halfway through the letter format would pull me out of the story and remind me that this was a book. I think it would have worked better if the letters had maybe been scattered in the book with just regular narration beyond that.

Plus, it just felt like too much for one story. Though this book might find its way into the hands of a young person who is dealing with one or all of these issues and it will help them. So I can’t discount it. But as far as being a “great book”, meh.

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The Worst Class Trip Ever by Dave Barry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Something about this book rubbed me the wrong way. I think if I was a 12 year old boy, I probably wouldn’t care so much, and that is the target audience so it’s not that big of a deal. But reading this as an adult that lived through 9/11, it was hard for me to feel comfortable while reading about supposed terrorist plots and assassinations. It just kept me from laughing at all the fart jokes…I wanted to laugh but it was just really hard with that plot line yanking me out of the funny and into the real world.

I was really hoping that this was just going to be a story of shenanigans as the kinds bumbled around, I felt the terrorist plot was unnecessary. Wyatt and his friends were clearly dufuses and they didn’t need a wacky plot to make idiots of themselves. Just wandering D.C. as a class should have been funny enough.

Oh well…kind of a let down from some one who loved Dave Barry when she was 13…

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