Sea View 12

My 2 cents: You have about six weeks to read Marie Lu's breakout debut novel LEGEND, before the sequel, PRODIGY, is released January 29, 2013. Temple Hill Entertainment (Twilight) and CBS Films bought movie rights to LEGEND, and there is constant cyber-talk about which actors will play which characters. Will Kristen Stewart play June? Who will play Day, an Asian-Mongolian-Caucasian teen boy? Will Marie Lu get her wish of Ben Barnes portraying June's brother, Metias? Who will play Commander Jameson? Angelina Jolie? Or Meryl Streep? Enough talk about the movie that is soon to be in the making. Let's talk about the novel. First, no question, similarities abound between Legend and Hunger Games. Like Suzanne Collins, Lu sets her novel somewhere in North America's future. Both Day and June (Lu's central characters) live in the “Republic of America,” which is in Los Angeles, California, and is at war with the Colonies, the rest of the former United States, appa...

My 2 cents: I read Small Damages by Beth Kephart in one day. I checked it out of the library before lunch, and read until I finished it – at 9:45 p.m. It was a Monday in December, chilly and wet. I put it down only to take a shower and feed the cat. I read it straight through the day and two meals. What can a book reviewer say about a book she loves? I want to walk into the pages of Spain, near Seville, present-day, and become part of the story. I want to cook and learn how to make paella from Estela, the queen of Los Nietos. I want to get a camcorder and film a movie about life for my daughter the way Kenzie does for her daughter. I want to sit in the courtyard in the hot sun with the lizards, and watch Esteban shoe his horse, while Kenzie waits, watching, too. I want to taste saffron, red and gold, from Estela's mother's jar. Kephart's novel begins like any number of other well-written, interesting Young Adult novels. An intelligent, affluent girl...

My 2 cents: The saying “everything old becomes new again” is certainly true for A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. First published 50 years ago, L'Engle's novel boasts a brand-new “Anniversary Edition” cover in 2012. The look is sleek and shiny, with a blue metallic background, the gold Newbery Medal seal, and tiny ringed figures of L'Engle's beloved characters, Meg Murry, and Mr. Murry. The book's message is more relevant to me today than when I first read it. The classic novel's new cover hints at one of the book's central themes, time and space travel, “tessering” - it's called, or “wrinkling time.” Brave to publish these ideas in 1962, L'Engle again shows courage in publishing her “radical” notions of bending time, keeping family together, rescuing the lost, and, above all, that love always trumps hate. With Mr. Murry lost in another dimension, young Meg is compelled to leave home, go find her scientist father, and br...

My 2 cents: Michelle Cooper doesn't miss a beat. Not one. The FitzOsbornes in Exile begins where the prequel, A Brief History of Montmaray , leaves off – with Princess Sophia at Aunt Charlotte's sumptuous England estate. “I write this sitting at an exquisite little Louis the Fifteenth secretaire in the White Drawing Room, using a gold fountain pen borrowed from the King of Montmaray (Toby), and a bottle of ink provided by one of the footmen. Fortunately, the paper is just a six-penny exercise book that I bought in the village this morning – otherwise I'd be too intimidated to write a word. Anyway, here I sit, scribbling away in my journal on this first full day of my new life.” (p. 3) Sophia's new life in London is quite the contrast from her life at Montmaray. Remember the smoking stove, Vulcan, and Sophia huddled under dusty covers under a leaky roof to write her journal entries. In this second novel of the Montmaray series, Cooper...

My 2 cents: Michelle Cooper's novel defies the odds. First, it's her debut novel. Second, it is a work of historical fiction (set in pre-WWII on a rocky, windswept island off the coast of Spain). Third, Cooper's book was even more riveting, and down-right heart-stopping the second time I read it. Princess Sophia receives a journal from her brother, Toby, as a gift for her 16 th birthday. Thus, the novel begins: “This is the journal of Sophia Margaret Elizabeth Jane Clementine FitzOsborne, begun this twenty-third day of October 1936, on the occasion of her sixteenth birthday.” Forget cell phones, drivers' licenses, getting to school on time, and preparing for the SAT's. Sophia, an orphan, introduces her readers to the people who matter most to her: her older cousin and best friend, Veronica, older brother and heir to the throne, Toby, and little sister Henrietta (umm, Henry, rather). Also, there's Simon Chester, who's the son of ...

My 2 cents: Did you read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series? Either way, you will love this newest novel by Ann Brashares, which is kinda, sorta an offshoot of “The Sisterhood.” Hence, the fitting name of Brashares' book, “3 willows.” Ama, Jo and Polly take turns telling the story is first-person narratives, beginning with the last day of eighth grade. In “Traveling Pants” tradition, this novel unfolds over a summer, in fact, the all-important, fork-in-the-road summer between middle school and high school. The three girls are connected by a five-year-old twist and turn-y friendship, and by the willow trees they planted together in a park near their elementary school. Ama (p.8): “We met on the first day of third grade, because of all the 132 kids in our grade, we were the three who didn't get picked up … we didn't talk to each other at first. I was embarrassed and scared and I didn't want to show it … that was the day they gave out the little willo...