Ms. Marvel: Teenage Wasteland

I'm slowly becoming more disenchanted with this series. Am I too old? Am I just annoyed with her teenaged antics? Am I the person yelling at kids to get off my lawn? Whatever the case, this ninth installment wasn't for me. Ms. Marvel wasn't even in the firs half! She peaced out, because life was stressing her out too much and her friends tried picking up the slack by pretending to be her, but that's kind of hard to do when you don't have superpowers. Also included are some "complicated" teenaged love triangles. Overall, it was just ok.

Ms. Marvel

The hype surrounding this comic was well justified, I couldn't put it down, it was, simply put, one of the best comics I've read in a very long time! Kamala Khan isn't anything special, she's a teenage girl living in Jersey and trying to come to terms with her Pakistani heritage. She desperately wishes to be thin, blond, popular, and to have superpowers just like her role models do. One night she gets her wish but she quickly discovers that there is more to life than being popular. She has to decide what she wants and who she really is. In the meantime she pairs up with her best friend Bruno to stop a bad guy, The Inventor, and in the process try to avoid getting grounded by her parents. A remarkable and empowering read, suitable for everyone!

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

LOVED this book, after reading the amazing "Silver Lining's Playbook" I knew I would have to read everything else Matthew Quick published and damn I'm glad I did. Quick makes his debut in the young adult genre with one hell of a bang. Literally, this book is fantastic!

Leonard Peacock's birthday should be a special, instead today is the day that he will kill himself and his former best friend. Tired of being an outsider for too long and dealing with internal turmoil, Leonard sees this as the only way out. In this witty, saddening, heartbreaking, and darkly humorous novel, the reader gets amazing insight to how complicated the human psyche is and just how much it can withstand before it snaps.

Filled with unforgettable, wildly unique characters and a witty narrator, this book will have you racing to the end. Impossible to put down. A DEFINITE must read!

Where Things Come Back

“Where Things Come Back” isn’t one of your stereotypical feel good young adult novels. Author,
John Corey Whaley, grabs you right from the get go and throws you right to the wolves. On the very first page, seventeen year old Cullen Witter sees his first dead bodies, one of them being his cousin. Instead of feeling sadness, Cullen just feels numb, knowing deep inside that this was bound to happen eventually to his no good, junkie, older cousin. And the story doesn’t get any easier from there! Within a few chapters Cullen’s younger brother and role model, Gabriel, goes missing. At first everyone thinks it’s a mistake and he’ll just come waltzing back, but as the weeks drag on, Cullen, his parents, and his best friend, Lucas slowly start to go mad, they simply don’t know how to react. To make things worse, their small town is becoming notorious for the spotting of a once thought extinct woodpecker. People flock to find a glimpse of this bird, and it tears Cullen and his family apart that more people seemingly care about finding this stupid bird then they do his brother.

Throughout the novel Cullen tries nearly everything to escape the hurt and bewilderment about the loss of his brother, he tries to escape in sex, in his brother’s room and music, in Lucas’ crazy kidnapping ideas but nothing works. It’s a gut-wrenching journey that the reader feels in the pit of his/her stomach as we wait eagerly to see how it all turns out. Whaley beautifully illustrates the character’s emotions, so much so, that sometimes we forget that we aren’t a character in this book. It is easy to get lost in this painful journey.

The story is also made more interesting by the occasional side chapters by other minor characters. At first the purpose isn’t clear but as the story goes on they have an interesting way of being the missing puzzle pieces that help put together the larger picture.

Overall, I think that this is a fantastic book for teenagers. It is engaging, addresses a plethora of issues: family problems, the loss of a sibling, teen sex, stereotypes, high school problems, etc. There is something that everyone can easily relate to. Even though the story is told through the eyes of a high school boy, girls would have no problems relating with many of his problems. The story was well written, kept the reader hanging, age appropriate (since basically anything goes with teenagers these days), and had a unique story pattern that kept the plot hurtling forward. I think that this was well deserving of the Printz award.