So not okay

Everything is Fine is the kind of book that enrages me as an adult reader. What kind of father would leave his pre-teen daughter home alone with her grief-stricken and almost catatonic mother? Huh? What kind of father? (I had a similar reaction reading The Hunger Games and Ender's Game, among others -- who would do that to kids? Yes, yes, I know the answer ... doesn't mean it doesn't make me mad.) Just because it enrages me, of course, doesn't mean that it's not a good book. I have an underlying sensation of anxiety and impotency (as did perhaps the other adults in this Ann Dee Ellis novel) that upsets me as I read or listen. Which I suppose is a sign of a powerful piece of fiction -- it seems so real to me.

Young Mazzy is left in charge of her household when her father gets his chance to appear on a national stage as a sportscaster for ESPN 360. Mazzy's family has been in crisis since the loss of their toddler daughter, Olivia, in a terrible accident. Dad calls frequently, he's arranged for a home health aide/friend to check up on Mom every couple of days, and someone else shops and delivers groceries. But Mazzy is clearly not up to the job. She watches a lot of television (and gets her advice on human behavior from Oprah), occasionally tries to rouse her mother, and keeps an eye out on the neighbors. The adults have called Children's Services, but otherwise they seem to do little but check up on Mazzy occasionally. Everything is most definitely not fine (although it is a very clever way to meet the needs of fiction for young people -- first get the parents out of the picture).

Mazzy's story is told in a series of short (occasionally just a sentence or two in length) first-person chapters. She's understandably pissed off at her father, frightened -- which comes off sometimes as bravado and sometimes as simple nastiness, and fiercely loyal to her mother. She also might be expressing herself artistically (more on this in a moment).

The narrator is Carrington MacDuffie, who I heard read (that is such an awkward phrase ... I struggled with it on a previous post) Once Upon a Marigold a year or so ago. She has a slightly hoarse, adult-sounding voice, but she moves it up a register to speak Mazzy's dialogue. She sounds authentically youthful, and I found it a very effective technique, as it seems to be another manifestation of a child forced to be an adult. MacDuffie is also quietly splendid in the few opportunities she has to voice Mazzy's mother: This woman is indeed sick and tired and you could hear it in every word she struggles to say.

There are other adults in this story (now that I think of it, there is just one other young character), and MacDuffie has the narrative skills to create unique and consistent voices for each of them. Along with Ellis' vivid descriptions of them, I can see many of them clearly: Fat, diabetic, sympathetic neighbor Norma; snippy, busybody-ish neighbor Mrs. Dean, and the kindly yet determined social worker with a lot of cleavage.

The novel has a feature that makes little sense to me as a listener, though. Periodically, MacDuffie reads what sounds like a title for a piece of art, as it is followed by a description of the medium. The artwork is usually connected to what Mazzy has told us in the preceding chapter. But, since I don't have a copy of the book (my library hasn't purchased this ... and we buy everything!), I don't know if the art is represented in the book, or if the titles and descriptions stand on their own. I think I understand why they might just be titles and descriptions -- which is why I confess to confusion as a listener. I'd like to see the book.

I liked this book enough that I might just pick up Ann Dee (which is pronounced Andy) Ellis' first novel: This is What I Did.

Incredibly true adventure of two girls in love

Since I wasn't reading teen literature 25 years ago, I'm not sure I can fully appreciate the groundbreaking quality of Nancy Garden's Annie on My Mind. But I certainly read my share of trashy fiction, so I'm sure some gay or lesbian characters met a bloody end in my youthful reading (if they did, though, their sexual orientation probably sailed a goodly distance over my extremely naive head). I was expecting this to be a bit of a clunker -- perhaps even a hilariously dated message novel, but I was pleasantly surprised. Liza and her girlfriend Annie were a little swoony, a little whiney ... but hey! so is Bella Swan (in spades!).

In Annie on My Mind, Liza -- quietly overachieving at her private Brooklyn high school -- meets Annie -- public school girl from the low-rent part of the Upper West Side -- at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She falls for her because she likes the Temple of Dendur. The two girls embark on what everyone perceives as an intense friendship, but soon they realize that they wish to be more than friends. Over spring break, they find themselves trysting at the home of two of Liza's teachers -- ostensibly Liza was feeding the cats -- when they (and their teachers) are outed as "practicing" homosexuals. The homophobic, control-freak headmistress compels Liza to defend herself at a hearing of her school's board of governors and the girls' romance can't seem to survive the exposure.

Liza is telling us this story in a flashback format: She's now midway through her freshman year at MIT, and she's writing another long letter to Annie (enrolled at Berkeley) that she ultimately won't mail to her. Her reminiscences, though, enable her to pick up the phone. There is no car crash (that was the previous post!).

The audiobook is part of the book's 25th anniversary repackaging (the anniversary was in 2007), and is narrated by Rebecca Lowman. (It's interesting to look at some of the covers of the previous editions. According to Wikipedia, the cover with the girls' profiles is the author's favorite.) I think it was Lowman's reading that kept the 1980s melodrama at bay. She focused on the romance between the two girls, not the message behind it, and created and sustained unique characters for both Annie and Liza. Both sounded like believable young women: Liza confusedly in love and Annie a freer spirit. If the lesbian teachers, Miss Stevenson and Miss Widmer, and the homophobes, Mrs. Poindexter and Ms. Baxter, were a tad on the dramatic side ... well, they were drawn that way. Lowman convinced me of the humanness of this story, it was never caricatured or belittled.

The audio version includes a conversation between Nancy Garden and Kathleen T. Horning (actually, it's more like each is reading the questions and answers they produced for the 2007 edition of the book). Garden shares a lot of her personal story in the conversation, and her perspective on GLBTQ fiction for teens was very interesting. In discussing Annie's status as a frequently challenged book, Garden mentions that the first library challenge she heard about for Annie was right here in Portland in 1988. I wonder if this was at my library. I'm not in Portland right now, but I'm going to try and remember to ask our selector if she's got info on this.

Should I stay or should I go?

I wonder if it was this article in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago that resulted in all the holds that are currently on Gayle Forman's If I Stay at my library. Or perhaps it was Entertainment Weekly? Whatever is taking readers there, it's a good thing. Listeners won't find it too shabby either. Our heroine, Mia, who seems to"have it all" (hip, loving parents who don't mind that she has sex with her punk rocker boyfriend, a budding music career of her own playing the cello at the Juilliard School), loses everything one snowy morning in Oregon. A truck plows into her family's car killing her parents and younger brother (that's actually a spoiler ... sorry!) and grievously wounding her. Over the next day, Mia's essence (soul?) separates from her body and watches her hospital care and the stricken love of her relatives and friends. As she reflects on her brief life, Mia ultimately realizes that the decision to stay is hers alone.

Definitely a tear-jerker, but also an entertaining teen romance (there's kind of a racy bit in here), If I Stay is rescued from those tired genres by Mia's voice. She's honest, funny and knows how to tell us a good story: her romance with Adam, the birth of her much younger brother, how she connected with her best friend, how she became a cellist. By the end of the brief novel, we know Mia very well, and are -- of course -- deeply invested in her decision.

It is Mia's voice that makes this such a good audiobook. With her voice in your ears, the sentiment, sadness and -- yes -- humor all become so immediate. She's confiding in us -- we are, after all, the only people who can hear her. Her confidences become so much more touching when you hear someone else's voice (besides your own) relate it. Some books just thrive on audio and this is one of them.

The narrator is Kirsten Potter, who I heard read Madapple last year. She's extremely skilled and isn't afraid to read with emotion. If she sounds a little adult to me, I think that's a small quibble. She seems utterly invested in Mia's story and wants to tell it to us.

Another highlight of this audiobook is the music. According to the book's website, the cello music is original to the audiobook, composed by John Bauers. (What's odd is that I didn't hear him credited on the audiobook ... hmmm?) A brief squib of solo cello music starts and ends every disc and I also heard it quietly underneath one portion of the book's text -- in the part where Mia is describing how she became a cellist. It's delightful to hear.

This book takes place in an unnamed small college town in Oregon, which always makes my ears perk up. It seems to be fairly close to Portland, so I set the novel in Monmouth in my head. I was surprised to learn that Gayle Forman lives in Brooklyn, because she sure knew Portland. No generic city locations for her! She had Mia visit the Roseland Theatre, the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall and the Hawthorne Boulevard hipster shopping area. Plus, she gave a shout-out to the Portland Cello Project. On the book's website, Forman says she was partially inspired to write this by Oregon. You are welcome back anytime, Gayle! Be sure to drop by the library!

Or you could go both ways

Diana Wynne Jones brings back Sophie Hatter Pendragon, her husband the vain Wizard Howl, and Calcifer the fire demon in House of Many Ways, which is -- in many ways -- a more satisfying novel than Howl's Moving Castle. At least, it made more sense to me. Charmain Baker, who is mistakenly called Charming by several characters in the novel, is a teenager raised by a protective mother who allows her to do nothing but read. This is fine with Charmain, but proves to be a bit of a burden when she is bundled off to her uncle's -- Wizard Norland -- house to look after it while he is away being treated for a mysterious illness by the elves. Charmain is looking forward to the independence, but since she can't cook, wash dishes, or do laundry, life at the house gets a bit stinky and messy.

Fortunately, a young wizard apprentice named Peter (whose name sounds like Peeta when read by narrator Jenny Sterlin, but that could be because I just finished reading Catching Fire) shows up, and he's got a bit more of a handle on the household chores. And, Charmain also finds herself a job more to her liking, working in the King's library cataloging his papers. Charmain had been hoping that her library job would involve reading, but -- well, she finds out what we all do in this business: There's not much time for reading. At the castle, she meets the Pendragons, who now have a slightly spoiled toddler named Morgan. The Pendragons have been called in to solve a mystery and -- with Charmain's assistance (because, of course, she's got untapped magic skills) -- end up solving a few others along the way. Like many a Wynne Jones, the plot gets extremely convoluted and I would only get bogged down in the way elementary school students do when they try to sum up a story. I think you'll have to read or listen yourself.

I'd recommend listening. Jenny Sterlin narrates this one, as it appears that she's been hired for the whole "series" of Wizard Howl novels. She's an excellent reader, investing the characters with vivid characterizations and moving the story along at an entertaining pace. She's got a slightly husky quality to her voice that I find quite engaging to listen to. In addition to the usual suspects of royalty, wizards, teenaged protagonists and some very bad purple people called Lubbockins, Sterlin portrays some gnomish creatures called Kobolds as well as not one, but two, loudly demanding toddlers.

Oh, and don't forget Calcifer. He sounded different to me in this novel (than she voice him in Howl's Moving Castle), but I liked it. It was like he had come into his own and was more crackly and even a bit malevolent.

Next year, when I've finished up with the intensive power listening, I think I might go back and listen to some other of her books. For me, they might listen better than they read. Here's an interview with her that I found interesting.

Word nerd*

I'm still not particularly confident about what to look for in a picture-book read-aloud, so I've not got much to say about Kate Banks' Max's Words. Max is the youngest of three brothers; the older two each has a collection: Benjamin is a philatelist and Karl a numismatist (Hey, I've not got much to say about the audiobook, I must blind you with vocabulary!). Neither boy will share even one item from their collections with baby brother Max.

So Max decides that he will start his own collection and he chooses words (philophilist?). He cuts them out and collects them, and soon he discovers that he can organize them into sentences and then into stories. Soon, Benjamin and Karl want to play too.

The picture book incorporates Max's words in the art. As Max starts to put his words together, they emerge from text to art. Each word is writ large on a piece of paper (?) and the papers are arranged into sentences. (It is similar to how the names of the author and illustrator are pictured on the book cover.) The sentences (as art) move dramatically across the pages of the book, no longer confined to the standard straight, horizontal dictates of text. Occasionally, the word includes a clue about its definition (a la concrete poetry). It's a clever demonstration of the power of story.

The short reading is narrated by Andrew Watts. I appreciated that he doesn't read with an exaggeratedly youthful, yet deliberate pace. He performs the dialog between the three brothers very well, giving each one a little bit of vocal character. The bragging and bickering between the three boys sounds brotherly.

I didn't realize that the words take two different forms (text and art) until I listened for the second time (the version with the page turn chimes). And, I wish that Watts had made more of a distinction between the two forms. There is one page -- I think it's Max's first complete sentence with his words -- where the sentence appears in both text and art. Watts reads this. one. word. at. a. time. When I was just listening (before I opened the book), I knew that there was going to be something different about those words in the book. And there was. But, despite the fact that the technique showed up several more times, he never does it again.

Watts also doesn't finish the book! He stopped reading two pages before the end. These two pages are exclusively words as art, but nonetheless, they are words. They should have been part of the audiobook.

*Just a shout out to a fun book I recently read (with my eyes): Word Nerd by Susin Nielsen.

Change the locks!

Nancy Werlin gives such a sense of place to her novel, The Killer's Cousin, that -- despite its now-dated references, I truly felt like I was there, in Cambridge, with the creepy cousin living downstairs. Since I listened to it, though, I should probably give some credit to Nick Podehl, the narrator. The book was published in 1998, and here's the original cover (the one from our catalog's Syndetics). Much better is the current cover, with the bathtub image.

David Yaffe has just been acquitted of the murder of his girlfriend in a sensational trial in Baltimore. His parents have sent him to live with his mother's brother and his wife and daughter in Cambridge in order to complete his senior year. He moves into the family's upstairs "mother-in-law" apartment, which he has to access by walking through the Shaughnessy's own living quarters. The previous occupant of the apartment was their elder daughter, Kathy, who committed suicide in the bathtub four years earlier.

David senses right away that things aren't right in the Shaughnessy household. His aunt and uncle converse through their 11-year-old daughter, Lily. Lily doesn't seem to like David at all, and even tells him that she should be living in the upstairs apartment not him. At Thanksgiving, David effects a kind of reconciliation between his aunt and uncle, and Lily turns evil. She regularly enters his apartment and systematically destroys his belongings. David discovers her listening to her parents' lovemaking, and she spies on him kissing the college student who lives downstairs. As a "fellow" killer, David senses that Lily had something to do with her sister's suicide, and he urges her parents to get her some help. But they can't hear that.

David is the perfect victim for Lily's psychological terrorism. Even though he hadn't meant to kill his girlfriend, he lives with the knowledge that his anger led to her death. And as Lily is breaking David, this novel is creepy and suspenseful. I know I was into the story because I kept mentally shouting at David: "Change the locks!" But, satisfyingly, David never loses his humanity. His ultimate concern is for Lily and her mental health, and he quite heroically sacrifices himself for her.

Nick Podehl, heard a few weeks ago in Discordia, is so very good here. There are only a few male readers who really sound like teenagers, and Podehl is one of them. I can hear David's guilt and lack of confidence in his voice, as well as that teenage know-it-allness. He reads quietly, but he can burst out when the dialog calls for it. He doesn't dramatically distinguish between characters in his reading, but he paces the dialog extremely well, so following it is no problem. A reader could have gone over the top with disturbed young Lily, and Podehl vocally creates her character without histrionics. He even has to impersonate a ghost occasionally, and that comes off sounding legitimate as well. It was a compelling listen.

I did find that listening to the many dated references occasionally took me out of the story (more so than the Werlin title I listened to last month). No cell phone, no iPod = no current teenager. But, of course, teens are smart enough to overlook this stuff and I can too. I will confess I had never heard of the Star (now Shaw's) Market "loyalty" card swapping that David and his friends engage in. Now it looks like it's done online and not in person. Ah, that's the difference between 1998 and 2009.

Precious possessions

I read the deeply moving story of Hana's Suitcase way back in 2003 when it was first published, so I didn't expect to be gobsmacked by it again. The author, Karen Levine, first told the story in a radio program (or programme as the Canadians say), and then wrote the book. I had a librarian's memorable moment putting this into the hands of a young girl Hana's age a couple of years ago. Her mother came up to me a half hour later and pronounced it the perfect choice! (Those are so much better to remember than the screw-ups, aren't they? I had one of those today.)

Hana's Suitcase is the story of Fumiko Ishioka, a young woman who runs a small Holocaust research center in Japan. In 2000, the center acquired the suitcase -- a memento (which is not the right word) of Auschwitz. Fumiko, urged on by students who participated in the center's programming, was determined to find out its history. All she knew was the owner's name, written on the cover. The book teases out Hana Brady's story, alternating with the steps of Fumiko's research. Levine's writing is so tender and gentle that I wouldn't hesitate to give this to any elementary school student as an explanation of the Holocaust. It spares the horror, without sparing the loss of that one little girl.

It's also a great book about research, about how to go about answering a question that you might have. Fumiko's dogged detective work (she didn't let a national holiday stop her!) eventually led her to Hana's older brother George, who had survived Auschwitz and emigrated to Canada. His stories of their growing up in Czechoslovakia and their internment in the workcamp at Theresienstadt form the bulk of the book. And the photographs he had of his family -- preserved during the Holocaust by Gentile members of his family -- provided the answer to the most persistent question the Japanese students had: What did Hana look like? She was lovely, wasn't she?

The audiobook was read by Stephanie Wolfe. She read this straight and simply for younger listeners, providing accents for all the story's participants. I personally didn't care for this, but she did it well. When the excerpt from the radio program came on, I could tell that Wolfe had done her research as her interpretation of Fumiko was startingly close to the woman's speaking voice.

Yes, the best thing about this audiobook is the part that isn't from the book. Excerpts of Fumiko and George relating the story of the suitcase and how its puzzle was revealed conclude the audiobook. It is powerful listening. Even though they are essentially repeating what you learned in the book, hearing their voices is riveting.

It looks like you can hear the program in its entirety at the CBC website. Go. Listen. Now.

Play ball!

I've been harsh on nonfiction audio lately, I suppose because its production mostly seems so academic. So ... good for you. Generally (yes, I'm generalizing here), nonfiction lacks a compelling forward momentum that a plotted story has, and which can work so well on audio. I also think that the readers I've heard lately take an overly serious approach -- using their "this-is-important" voices. But Dion Graham rejects this technique in his narration of Kadir Nelson's Coretta Scott King Award-winning We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball (gosh, I just love that image of Josh Gibson). Graham -- to use that overly trite phrase -- brings Nelson's "literary nonfiction," and, as importantly, the era it describes, alive (ooh, too many commas, sorry).

In We Are the Ship, Nelson's unnamed narrator tells us about Negro League baseball in a natural, emotive account that delivers the facts in a readable, accessible way. Told thematically, not chronologically, in chapters called "innings," we learn about its origins, understand its context in racially segregated America, meet the players, and hear the stories of courage, tragedy and triumph. The stunning illustrations evoke a beautiful summer's day of baseball, played by strong, handsome, and strikingly black men. And by that statement, I mean that Nelson's portraits are colored in a brown/black so rich, so deep, so dense that you just want to keep looking. I think they'd be equally fabulous outside of a book ... hey, there's a traveling exhibit of the paintings.

So, if you don't have the paintings, is the book as meaningful? While I wouldn't say that narrator Dion Graham replaces the illustrations, he serves a similar function: Enhancing the text in a way that your understanding and appreciation of the story are increased. Graham is terrific. I first heard him read What is the What (before I figured out book covers!), and have only now figured out that I watched him on The Wire. He's an immensely talented voice actor.

His African American phrasings here are perfect. His deep voice seems confiding, like he and I are sitting in the dugout watching the game unfold and he's quietly telling you the story over the course of the afternoon. He's almost like a great play-by-play announcer (or maybe he's the color commentator). Graham creates tension as well as sadness with his voice, and he finds the humor there as well. This audiobook was over quickly (it's under two hours), and I savored every moment.

Kadir Nelson reads his own afterword, and he participates in a short interview at the end of the audiobook. He seemed a little stiff, but I was glad to hear from him. I wish the publisher would identify the interviewer, but that's a small quibble.

The audiobook includes a disc that's a slideshow of the book's illustrations. (Unlike the Lincoln photobiography, I got this one to work in my computer.) While We Are the Ship's narrative doesn't refer to the illustrations; Hank Aaron's forward, Nelson's afterword and the interview all mention the paintings, so I think there's a place for this disc in the audiobook. I didn't miss the paintings while listening, but -- unlike the Lincoln biography -- I had already seen them. So, is it fair of me not to gripe about this illustrative work converted to aural medium only, while complaining about it in the Lincoln book?

It's probably not fair. But this book is also elevated by Graham's superior performance.

Hear ye! Hear ye!

Newes from the Dead is the kind of book I would have excitedly grabbed off the library shelves when I was a teen reader (in that brief time before I turned to the dark side -- the adult shelves). I loved historical fiction that immersed you in a specific time and place, and -- of course -- you can't go wrong with a wronged heroine.

The full title: Newes from the Dead: Being a True Story of Anne Green, Hanged for Infanticide at Oxford Assizes in 1650, Restored to the World and Died Again 1665. It's by Mary Hooper, who based it on a true event she heard about on the radio. Anne Green was seduced by the grandson of her employer, who promised that he would "raise her" to live as a lady. When she became pregnant, she first tried an herbal abortifacient, and subsequently delivered a stillborn baby in the manor's privy ("house of office" ... I love that expression). She thought to hide the body until she had time to give it a proper burial, but when the other servants saw the bloody condition of her clothing, she was found out. She told her employer, Sir Thomas Reade, who the father of her child was, sealing her doom. Sir Thomas ensured that she was jailed, tried, and sentenced to hanging. At the conclusion of her trial (by a jury of her peers ... not!), physicians at Oxford requested -- as was their due -- her body for dissection.

Anne was hanged, and her family -- following the instruction of the hangman -- hung on her legs and beat on her chest in order to speed the breaking of her neck. She was pronounced dead and delivered to the Oxford physicians. As they prepared for dissection, one student, Robert Matthews, thinks he has spotted a twitch of her eyelid. But he can't be sure, and besides, Robert is a stammerer and tries not to speak in public very often.

We know that Anne is alive, because -- trapped in darkness, unable to open her eyes or move her limbs -- she has begun to tell us her sad story. The book alternates between Anne's first-person narrative, and a third-person description of the events above the apothecary's shop as the Oxonians prepare to dissect and study her remains. This is a very effective literary tool, as each chapter with the doctors draws out the suspense of whether they were going to start cutting before Robert manages to speak. Anne's story was a terrific one as well, full of the juicy details of historical fiction. And who wouldn't enjoy the horror of the world of educated men who all purport to know better than Anne. I mean the poor girl had her baby in a 17th century toilet!

The story drags a bit towards the end. The doctors know that Anne is living, and the lengthy descriptions of the various learned methods of reviving her (bleeding and enemas, called clysters) go on for a bit too long. Needless to say, Anne's future looks bright at the end, as does that of the (I think) fictional Robert Matthews.

A brief riff on the cover. Does she look dead ... or merely uncomfortable? I guess you might pick up the book to check. Far better is the British paperback.

The audiobook is pretty darn good. Anne is voiced by Rosalyn Landor and the autopsy sections are by Michael Page. Landor reads Anne with a slightly high-pitched, innocent voice that has just a trace of an English country servant (she's not reading it with an "educated" English accent). She creates voices for a number of the other characters -- both upper and lower classes -- that are interesting to listen to and consistent throughout the story. I've heard her read a couple other things this year, and this is by far my favorite of her work.

I've heard Michael Page read some adult novels (back when I listened to adult novels). He's got that resonant, confident, slightly superior delivery that was perfect for the pompous physicians. I also liked how both he and Landor voiced the villain, Sir Thomas, with similar tones of menace. Page is also an excellent stammerer.

The audiobook ends with a reading, by Page, of the original Newes from the Dead, by a "Scholler in Oxford for the Satisfaction of a friend, who defired to be informed concerning the truth of the bufineffe" in 1651. Page's reading style is perfect for the ornate 17th century language of this document, although it does go on and on. Hooper's fictionalization of this document is quite similar, though.

There's a helpful author's note as well, which speculates on how Anne actually survived her hanging. Clearly the rope didn't break her neck, so it must not have been placed correctly. Hooper also suggests that the extemely cold temperature on December 14, 1650 may have "frozen" her brain and thus it was prevented from being starved of oxygen. Can the cold penetrate your skull? Hmmm ...

Through a glass

I think that someone recommended Laura Resau's Red Glass to me when it came out a couple of years ago, but it went on the maybe-I'll-get-around-to-this-but-it's-not-likely pile, so I was glad to see an audio version come my way recently. Its journey of self-discovery and understanding was worth the wait. The narrator, Sophie, is a bit of a delicate flower: She has constant, unrealistic fears about death and disease, and is a loner because she doesn't feel relaxed enough around people to make friends. She lives with her mother and her husband, a Mexican immigrant, in Tucson. Her British mother's distant relative-by-marriage, Aunt Dika, a flamboyant Bosnian refugee, lives with them.

One day, stepfather Juan is contacted by U.S. Immigration: a young boy -- the only survivor of a group of Mexicans attempting to enter the U.S. illegally -- has Juan's business card in his possession. Does Juan know him? Juan doesn't, but the family agrees to take the boy in until his family can be located. It takes a while for six-year-old Pablo to trust them enough to speak, but eventually he tells them that he comes from a small village in Oaxaca. Sophie's family wishes to adopt Pablo, but they also want to give him the chance to make the decision, so Sophie and Aunt Dika -- along with Aunt Dika's Guatemalan boyfriend and his son Ángel -- make the journey by Volkswagon bus to Pablo's village. Ángel and his father intend to travel on to Guatemala to visit their old village, returning for the drive back to Arizona.

This is a giant step for Sophie, who has a lengthy catalog of all the catastrophes that could occur on their drive into the unknown. But her love for Pablo helps her, and when she must make an unexpected trip to Guatemala to help out Ángel and his father, Sophie calls upon reserves she didn't know she had to accomplish this. It is a most satisfying journey.

The audiobook is narrated by Emma Bering. She needs to create a number of characters with unique accents in this story: Sophie's mother's English, Aunt Dika's Bosnian, a variety of Spanish speakers, as well as two who speak in indigenous Mixtec and Mayan. There's a significant amount of Spanish sprinkled through the story, and she sounded completely comfortable with the language. Each character was interesting to listen to and Bering was consistent in her portrayals.

She voiced Sophie -- at first full of fears and gradually full of confidence -- a bit overly youthful in the beginning; she sounded more like 10, rather than 16. But I grew to appreciate Bering's choice, as Sophie's newfound fuerte (strength) and chispa (spark) were evident in her voice as the story progressed.

If I have a concern about this performance, I'm not sure it's a fair one: All of the Spanish speaking characters are performed in Spanish-inflected English, even when they are speaking Spanish (Sophie tells us the languages of a conversation). Yet, when Sophie speaks Spanish, she continues to speak in her standard American accent (as does Ángel). This bothered me during the entire length of the book, but -- at the same time -- I think I understand the narrator's decision (no doubt guided by the audiobook's director). You can't, after all, have characters speak in multiple ways (beyond emotional shadings, I mean). It would be too confusing for the listener. So, I think I can let it go. Whoosh! There it went.

Into the woods

Are zombies the new vampires? Can Mary, non-zombie heroine of The Forest of Hands and Teeth, be as whiny and annoying as Bella, non-vampire heroine of the Twilight series? I don't know the answer to the first question, and as for the second: Mary is considerably less dependent on males for her identity than Bella, but she sure whines as much.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth is by Carrie Ryan, and its heroine, Mary, lives in the ultimate gated community: A small settlement completely surrounded by a wire fence that keeps the Unconsecrated out. If you are attacked and bitten by the Unconsecrated you will become one, so her community deals harshly with anyone who is bitten: decapitation. Mary's father is believed to be one of the Unconsecrated slavering beyond the fence, and -- as the novel begins -- Mary's mother strays too close to the fence and is bitten herself. Except for her brother, Mary is now alone, and she is taken in by the Sisterhood, a group of religious women who seem to make all the decisions for the community.

As Mary prepares for her arranged marriage (it is important for the community to keep reproducing), the fence is breached and the settlement is overrun. Mary, her brother and his wife, Harry (her betrothed) and Travis (Harry's brother and the man she really loves), and Travis' betrothed all escape and find themselves traveling a fenced-in path through the Forest of Hands and Teeth to an unknown destination. Are there other communities who have survived the Return (of the Unconsecrated)? Is there a place where the buildings are taller than trees and the ocean stretches out forever, as Mary's mother told her? Will the small band survive to find out?

Portions of this book are extremely exciting ... I mean extremely! I mean that I would put on the CD as I'm turning out the light (a little "bedtime" reading) and I did not gently nod off to sleep. I had to stay awake until the danger had passed. Because in a zombie book (and let me not forget to mention that the author never uses that term), no one is off limits. Except Mary, since she's telling the story. And, quite frankly, although I grew tired of Mary's whining, I was kind of invested in the people who joined her on her journey. You never knew who was going to be next.

In between these scenes of great tension, unfortunately, we get to listen to a lot of Mary. Do I love Travis, is there an ocean, why did my brother desert me after our mother's death, what happened to the people who used to live in this house ... she goes on and on.

But I don't know if my impatience with Mary's inner thoughts was a result of a longing to get out of her brain and back on the path eluding the Unconsecrated, or if the narrator was so vastly uninteresting. Her name is Vane Millon and I think she needs some more practice at narrating. She reads in what I think was a deliberately unemotional way, which might have been a choice because Mary is a little dead inside (Aha! She's all but Unconsecrated!) But it seems so at odds with the real tension evoked by the story, and such lines in the text as "I'm in a frenzy." Huh?

Millon also phrases many of the book's sentences in a very peculiar way. She comes to what sounds like a full stop [a few moments silence] and then continues the second clause of the sentence. It was quite disconcerting, forcing your brain to remember that what you heard earlier is, in fact, part of the whole sentence. She does this throughout the book, which means that it ceased to bother my brain after a while, but it still makes for very odd listening. While reading, she would also emphasize odd words in a sentence.

Aside from Millon's performance -- which I do think detracts from the story -- this is one of those books that I wonder are a better eye-read. You want to blast through this, you want to get to the end and find out what the heck is going on (and ... fair warning: you won't find much out as the author has envisioned a trilogy). Going at the narrator's pace is frustrating. Going at this narrator's pace is even more so.