Words by Webb

Rip the Page! Adventures in Creative Writing

Author: Karen Benke

Paperback: 256 pages

Publisher: Roost Books (July 27, 2010)

Ages: 8 and up

If you want to meet the magical Karen Benke of Rip the Page! check out her book trailer her Book Trailer

I think this could also be a fun “read and do together” activity for a parent and child. What a fun new year’s resolution! To write together!

In Leah’s Wake

Author: Terri Giuliano Long

Paperback: 368 pages

Publisher: CreateSpace (October 1, 2011)

Synposis:

Protecting their children comes naturally for Zoe and Will Tyler — until their daughter Leah decides to actively destroy her own future.

Leah grew up in a privileged upper-middle class world. Her parents spared no expense for her happiness; she had all but secured an Ivy League scholarship and a future as a star athlete. Then she met Todd.

Leah’s parents watch helplessly as their daughter falls into a world of drugs, sex, and wild parties. While Will attempts to control his daughter’s every move to prevent her from falling deeper into this dangerous new life, Zoe prefers to give Leah slack in the hope that she may learn from her mistakes. Their divided approach drives their daughter out of their home and a wedge into their marriage.

Twelve-year-old Justine observes Leah’s rebellion from the shadows of their fragmented family. She desperately seeks her big sister’s approval and will do whatever it takes to obtain it. Meanwhile she is left to question whether her parents love her and whether God even knows she exists.

What happens when love just isn’t enough? Who will pay the consequences of Leah’s vagrant lifestyle? Can this broken family survive the destruction left in Leah’s wake?

Review:

“There but for the grace of God go I.”

It’s the kind of thing the little old ladies who sit in the last pew in church and pray the rosary before Mass starts say. But when you read In Leah’s Wake, you’ll be saying if you have any children in your life.

I admire this book’s ability to take a situation and show it from each person’s viewpoint. It is a great portrayal of the vast canyon between what is said, what is meant, and what is understood. It explores the relationship between spouses, between siblings and between children and parents. This book starts out as a slow, predictable teenage rebellion story as old as time but quickly rockets out of control. You’ll find you can’t stop reading, needing to know what will happen next.

For me the ending seemed a little “happily ever after”. I couldn’t believe the situation could hit such rock bottom and then return to a semblance of normalcy. But I guess that’s the unpredictability of life with teenagers. right?

Lots of foods have their own day but pizza is so special it gets an entire week — and we happen to be enjoying that week, the second week in January, right now. After enjoying pizza for dinner last night (my son had basketball practice so it was the perfect night for a quick meal), I’m following up today with a book that uses pizza to tell us all about the journey food makes from the wild to farms to stores to our dinner tables and even to the history books!

Who Wants Pizza? The Kid’s Guide to the History, Science and Culture of Food

Author: Jan Thornhill

Nonfiction: Ages 9 and up

Paperback: 64 pages

Publisher:Maple Tree Press (September 7, 2010)

Synposis:

From Maple Tree Press:

Using one of the most common foods that kids eat — pizza — as a jumping off point, and, using the same bold, graphic approach employed in I Found a Dead Bird and This Is My Planet, Thornhill takes an extraordinary and comprehensive look at some of the following topics:

• Why we eat and why we eat what we eat
• How we moved from eating the raw flesh of animals to becoming sophisticated consumers of food
• How producing food has changed over the years and how tastes have changed, too
• How food is produced for an ever-growing population
• How the food choices that every one of us makes can have an effect on the future

Review:

Those who think this book will be the history of pizza will be disappointed. Instead it uses the pizza connection (sometimes tenuously) to explore humans’ relationship to food. How did we first decide to try different foods, how have humans adapted as new foods were introduced to their diet, how have our food choices affected the envirnment and more. This book really looks at the BIG PICTURE.

This book includes enough illustrations, quirky facts, and tidbits of information to make this large subject easier to…ahem, digest. This book can serve as a jumping off point for a variety of discussions not just about food but about have-have not countries, environmental responsibility, and more. It provides no hard and fast decisions or opinions although it does lean toward the organic, vegetarian side of the menu. Meat and potato lovers beware

Deadly Reunion

Author: Amy Manemann

Paperback: 366 pages (also available in e-books)

Publisher: CreateSpace (July 5, 2011)

Synposis:

Amazon Synopsis:

Smart mouthed Taci Andrews is an investigative reporter for the Riverdale Times with a lot on her plate. Between receiving a dreaded invitation to her fifteen year high school reunion, her best friend’s divorce drama and her own solitary dating status her fun meter is pretty much pegged. When Taci’s partner goes missing while covering a missing child feature she is suddenly thrown into the story of her career, which oddly enough delves into a past she would rather forget. She soon finds herself squaring off against a malicious class Barbie Doll, the High School Quarterback and a steamy Fireman from her past whose deep blue eyes are still enough to curl her toes. Concerned about the disappearance of his friend’s daughter, Firefighter Tony Parsons returns to his hometown of Riverdale to see what is being done with the case. Using his connections with the police force he pulls in a few favors, running into former classmate Taci Andrews in the process. His last memory of Taci was back in high school when she’d given him a black eye for feeling up her shirt. He had to admit the grown up version of Taci was even better than the adolescent version and when he learns she’s covering the story for the Times he decides to tag along. Despite babysitting three hyped up children, having a disastrous date night, receiving an ominous warning and nearly getting blown up the sparks that quickly ignite between Tony and Taci are hard to ignore, despite their best efforts. As they delve deeper to uncover the deadly truths surrounding the sleepy town of Riverdale, the old feud that rested between them for ages begins to give way to an unexpected passion. But new feelings for one another or not they both have a job to do and a missing child to find. Can they put their feelings aside to solve the case or will they be next on the missing person’s list?

Review:

Taci Andrews is a spunky, smart-aleck character who is enjoyable to follow on her adventures. Deadly Reunion is a great balance of many things: romance, suspense, mystery, humor. Manemann did a great job portraying all the different types of high school “characters” and who they become as adults. A few strings of the story seemed a bit loose but overall I enjoyed reading Deadly Reunion. In this first book of a new series, Manemann has introduced a main character and many supporting characters that readers will enjoy returning to again and again.

The World We Found: A Novel

Author: Thrity Umrigar

Paperback: 320 pages (also available in hardcover, large print,e-books)

Publisher: Harper (January 3, 2012)

Synposis:

Book Flap:

University students in late-1970s Bombay, Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta were inseparable. Spirited and unconventional, they challenged authority and fought for a better world. But much has changed in the thirty years since those heady days. Following different paths, the quartet has drifted apart, and the day-to-day demands of work and family have tempered the revolutionary fervor they shared.

Then comes devastating news: Armaiti, who moved to America, is gravely ill and wants to see the old friends she left behind. For Laleh, reunion is a bittersweet reminder of unfulfilled dreams and unspoken guilt. For Kavita, it is an admission of forbidden passion. For Nishta, it is the end of self-delusion and the promise of freedom from a bitter fundamentalist husband. As for Armaiti, it is an act of acceptance, of letting go on her own terms even if her ex-husband and daughter do not understand her choices.

In the course of their journey to reconnect, Armaiti, Laleh, Kavits, and Nishta must confront the truths of their lives–acknowledge long-held regrets, face painful secrets and hidden desires, and reconcile their idealistic past and their compromised present. And they will have to decide what matters most, a choice that just may help them reclaim the extraordinary world they once found.

Review:

The World We Found is both a familiar and exotic story. The familiar tale of four friends, getting older, finding their lives are not what they once imagined, examining and questioning their life choices, facing their own mortality. These characters immediately felt like friends because their experience, their questions were the same that my friends and I are facing. But The World We Found takes place mainly in Indian. The exotic setting as well as the cultural differences were what kept me reading because, we don’t all face mid-life the same, particularly if we’ve grown up in another culture.

Each of the characters faced her own demons in this book: terminal illness, marital problems, coming to terms with a lesbian lifestyle, and guilt. Umrigar seems to give each woman and her issue equal “time” in the book but truthfully some of the more serious problems make the other women look like drama queens who want to make mountains out of molehills. I would have enjoyed a book more focused on one woman’s issue, particularly Nishta — trapped in an unexpectedly religous marriage — or Armaiti — dying of terminal cancer — so there would be more time to explore the situation and the character in more than a superficial way. But it was enjoyable to see the women interact with one another.

The World We Found is a great book for seeing a familiar situation placed in an unfamiliar culture and world viewpoint.

Thank you to Harper for the ARC they sent me!

Hope you enjoyed my 5Ws with Cooper Lawrence about being a celebrity expert and writing her debut novel on The Yoga Club.

Author: Cooper Lawrence

Paperback: 336 pages (also available in e-books)

Publisher: Gallery Books (December 20, 2011)

Synposis:

Back Cover:

Chatting it up with bendy WASPs is the last thing on Coco Guthrie’s mind during her 8:30 a.m. yoga class. Having made her fortune as the world-renowned inventor of Butt-B-Gone derriere cream, Coco still doesn’t feel like she belongs among the upper class — until she attends the swankiest Halloween soiree in Greenwich, Connecticut, where three of her fellow morning yogis shared her brilliant idea to appear as Sarah Palin.

Soon it’s clear that a love of stretching isn’t all this accidental sorority — which includes a single mom with echolalia, an entertainment reporter who charms the pants off handsome stars, and a drama-prone producer with a taste for drag — have in common.

When the four mischevious Sarahs wander away from the party to sneak a peek at the mayor’s neighboring estate, they are stunned to find him adorned in leather and latex, and rolling up a woman’s body in a Persian rug. To make matters worse, someone has spotted the spying Palins. Someone who threatens to expose their torrid affairs in business and the bedroom. Now the unlikely foursome must use all their wits and wiles to get to the bottom of the kinky crime. But will their budding friendship be strong enough to protect their deepest secrets?

Review:

Who are these people? Who lives like this? I would have read this book just for a peek at the whole other world of Greenwich. These are not my neighbors! Cooper Lawrence indeed makes the setting an entirely separate character. This situation, these people, their reactions…only in Greenwich. It’s almost like reading an article in National Geographic about an entirely foreign culture.

I worried that I would have trouble telling apart the three rich women who make up 75% of the main characters. No problem! Cooper has created rich characters with unique traits, stories, ways of talking and acting. You could determine who was Coco, Bailey or Olivia even if their first names were never mentioned after the first chapter.

Enjoy a fun escape to the wild world of Greenwich! Read The Yoga Club!

Damaged

Author: Melody Carlson

Paperback: 208 pages (also available in e-books)

Publisher: NavPress (September 19, 2011)

Synposis:

Back Cover:

Sixteen-year-old Haley’s life is about to change. With divorced parents, she’s allowed to choose who to live with. Tired of Mom’s restrictions (like no dating), she picks laid-back Dad, although that means she’ll have to go to a new school. But even that situation starts to look up when hottie Harris Stephens flirts with her. And when he asks her out, Haley ecstatically accepts.

Chalking up a mysterious warning about Harris to jealousy, Haley continues seeing him. But infatuation turns to devastation when Harris does something totally unexpected. Humiliation and peer pressure keep Haley from disclosing what happened, and with no one to talk to, her torturous secret is overwhelming.

Review:

Real life is rarely neat, black and white, or happily ever after. I appreciate that author Melody Carlson recognizes that and reflects it in her literary worlds. The teens in this book are real…even when the most horrendous accusations are thrown they are unwilling to completely abandon one of their own. After all, he is the star quarterback! Even his victim ricochets between anger, guilt, forgiveness, and a desperate need to be liked.

Every teen should read this book. Chances are they will recognize the best — and worst — of themselves in the book’s characters. Damaged also shows how quickly and unexpectedly situations can change from safe to out-of-control, something too many teens don’t appreciate. Melody Carlson does equally well when exploring the emotions and thoughts of the characters and when writing intense, suspenseful, what will happen next? scenes.

Damaged does have a Christian undertone but it is written with a light hand. Readers are not hit over the head with Christian beliefs, it is simply there, in the background, and not a key facet of every character’s personality. I believe it is written in a way that the Christian beliefs will be accepted as just another detail of the character’s back story.