Bookcase Bizarro: MG/YA Book Reviews, February, 2024

MG/YA Book Reviews by a MG/YA Writer

Table of Contents

Middle Grade Review

The Doug and Sheila Browne Upper MG/YA Book Review

The News

Welcome to the February Leap Year edition of Bookcase Bizarro: MG/YA Book Reviews!

This past month has been a bit more restful than last month, but I have a feeling it’s just the calm before the storm.

I ‘finished’ my reader magnet (a novella set in the same world as Shadow Apprentice) and am letting it rest/percolate before I complete the 3rd revision and send it to my beta readers for comments. I’ll do a 4th draft to incorporate those comments, run it through ProWritingAid and send it off for a manuscript evaluation. I’ll revise again (#5) before sending it off to my copyeditor and revise again (#6) before sending it to my proofreader. I’ll correct the proofs (draft #7) before finally formatting the manuscript for publication. What can I say? I’m a slow writer who values craft.

I’ll also begin outlining my next Garrison Creek novel or start re-writing the book I completed in 2023 (the first in a new series aimed at YA readers). Many experts say that the way to build readership is by writing one series at a time. As a writer, I love to switch between projects set in different worlds, aimed at different audiences and featuring different characters. It helps to keep my interest and excitement high, and my writing (hopefully) fresh and engaged. I don’t have to stop writing when I finish a book in a particular series to take a break (unless I want to). I can switch series instead.

I’ve also discovered that I love writing novellas. I’m wondering if they might be a way to buy myself more time by giving readers a story to focus on while I’m sneakily flipping back and forth between series.

The web serial launch of Shadow Apprentice on Wattpad will start on Monday, March 18, 2024. Check out my Wattpad page if you’d like to read it.

My plan is to release 1 chapter/day for 5 consecutive days before settling into a two-three chapters/week release schedule on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. During the week of April 29th, chapters will run on consecutive days until the series ends on Thursday, May 2. The first stage of my marketing plan really centres around using Wattpad as a discovery vehicle and I am very curious to see whether I can build an audience there, especially among 11-14-year-old readers. I’ll remove the story from Wattpad on May 8th before publishing it on all the usual online retailers.

On to the books…

The Books

This month, we time travel to ancient Rome, guided by Leonardo Da Vinci’s cat, and we are schooled on the inner workings of male entitlement/ toxic masculinity when a teenage boy gets checked by the women—and men—in his life.

So let some sunshine into your day and join me for some book talk!

A quick note to new readers: books that are available from the Toronto Public Library are marked #TPL, because books don’t have to be new or owned in order to be loved.

Middle Grade Book Review

Synopsis

Federico Gonzaga of Mantua is lonely. Taken as a hostage by Pope Julius II to ensure his father’s loyalty, Federico is confined to the palace. When a kitten pops out of a cabinet made by the famous Leonardo Da Vinci, Federico gains a much-needed companion. He cannot explain how the kitten suddenly becomes a full-grown cat overnight. Then an art collector from the future named Herbert Bother climbs out of the cabinet. He comes armed with a strange confection called chocolate and a burning desire for a sketch by Raphael. Federico agrees to act as a broker in return for chocolate. Lots of it. It seems like the perfect arrangement until Herbert encounters a sick beggar girl outside the palace and carries her back through the cabinet, never to return.

Bee resents having to house-sit in New Jersey with her two moms, who are both art fiends. Outraged when she catches a strange cat with a bird in its mouth, Bee bangs on her neighbour’s door. She’s fully prepared to deliver a lecture about the harm outdoor cats do to local wildlife, but is disarmed by the elderly Miss Bother. She not only recognizes the cat, she recognizes Bee, too. How can she, when she’s never met Bee before?

Bee is even more freaked out when Miss Bother shows her a 16th Century portrait that is the spitting image of Bee herself. Miss Bother tells Bee that the sketch was made by the artist Raphael, but there’s no signature to prove it. When Miss Bother implores Bee to “make things right,” Bee has no idea what she means.

Bee follows the cat into a wardrobe in the attic of Miss Bother’s house and finds herself in 16th Century Rome. She and Federico soon start piecing together the mystery of the Bothers and the sketch. But messing around with the past has terrible consequences. Soon Federico and Bee are fighting a desperate battle against time to save their timelines and themselves.

Review

Murdock’s book is partly an ode to Rebecca Stead’s When you Reach Me. Not only is Stead’s book referenced by Bee, but the time slip mechanics are almost as complex (though not as convincing). While Da Vinci’s Cat is intended for the same audience as When You Reach Me (grades 5-8), the charming chapter headings by Paul O. Zelinsky make it seem more suited to younger readers.

The portrayal of Michelangelo is hilarious. The great artist stinks because he never bathes, he stomps about and swears, and generally behaves like an out-of-control three-year-old. He storms out of the palace one day in a rage, vowing to never return. If he doesn’t finish painting the Sistine Chapel, both Federico’s and Bee’s timelines are in danger of being erased. Federico wrestles with the difficult necessity of having to play the grownup, who must figure out how to manipulate the proud and vain artist into finishing the Sistine Chapel. If he can’t, then he and Bee will cease to exist. Leonardo Da Vinci and Raphael fare little better, with Da Vinci making nasty comments about other painters’ work while Raphael earns the nickname of ‘peacock’ because of his love for fine clothes.

Alternating the story between two or more characters always comes with the risk that one story ends up being the most intriguing one. In Da Vinci’s Cat, Federico’s is the stronger story. He lives in a luxurious palace, watches the Sistine Chapel come to life and listens to Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael engage in vicious gossip behind each other’s backs. Being forced to house-sit for part of a summer in New Jersey just doesn’t compare. Still, one of the scariest scenes in the book belongs to Bee. She experiences the threat of erasure first hand when travels back to her own time and finds that one of her mother’s phone numbers no longer works, and that Miss Bother’s house is completely unrecognizable. The chill of almost becoming a ghost will stick in the minds of MG readers long after they close the book.

As fun as certain parts of the book were for me, the story didn’t hold together with the narrative tightness I’ve come to expect from Murdock’s work. As well, the ending was strangely unclear. I couldn’t figure out if Bee had landed back in her own time at a later date, or she’d tweaked the timeline in a ‘Back to the Future’ sort of way. Her relationship to Miss Bother was especially confusing.

The legacy reviewers don’t agree with me. Kirkus called the book ‘thoroughly charming’ and Booklist gave Da Vinci’s Cat a starred review. I’d recommend Murdock’s The Book of Boy instead. And young time travelers can’t go wrong with Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me. (All #TPL)

The Doug and Sheila Browne Upper MG/YA Book Review

Each month, I pick an upper MG or YA book to review in honour of my parents, Doug and Sheila Browne, who always made sure that I had challenging books to reach for on my shelf—books to grow into. This month’s DSB pick is:

Synopsis

Del Rainey is tying himself up in knots trying to get Kiera Westing, the girl he’s been crushing on, to notice him. Kiera is actively involved in their local church while Del daydreams his way through the services, trying to figure out a way to get close to her. One Sunday, Kiera volunteers for a new youth group and daydreamer Del rushes to join her, realizing too late that he’s just volunteered to take a purity pledge.

Del’s family expresses shock at this sudden change, since Del and his best friend, Qwan, have a reputation as womanizers at their high school. Del doesn’t know how he’s going to explain himself, but all the embarrassment will be worth it if he can just get Kiera to like him. Fortunately, Kiera’s best friend, Jameer, has also taken the purity pledge and soon Del’s hitting him up for intel on Kiera. Jameer agrees to act as an advisor on one condition. Del has to find out the answers to all the sex ed questions he and the other purity pledgers have, since they’re not allowed to attend ‘Healthy Living’ classes at the high school. (Yes, it’s really called that.)

With the other boys moving in on Kiera, Del is desperate enough to agree. He knows Kiera will be his, if he can only get to her first.

Review

(WARNING: minor plot spoiler ahead.)

Let me start out by saying that Del is a problematic character… which is exactly what Lamar Giles intended.

From the get go, Del objectifies Kiera, focusing on her body, regarding her as a prize to be won without ever considering who Kiera is in her own right or what she wants. Even when it’s perfectly clear to the reader that he and Kiera are different to the point of being incompatible, Del refuses to see it. Stuck in the constant replay of his own narrative, he refuses to acknowledge how SO not into him Kiera is. He doesn’t even listen when she stops him from kissing her, and tells him she’d rather be friends. He wants Kiera, and he’s prepared to do whatever it takes to get her. In so doing, he reveals just how little he understands her, and how little he respects her feelings or needs. Thanks to Giles’ brilliant writing, readers will understand every cringe-worthy detail.

Del’s disrespect and feelings of entitlement spill into other areas of his life, like his job at a fast-food restaurant. He puts in the minimum effort and makes excuses because he thinks the job is beneath him. He even makes fun of a female co-worker for working so hard. “Can’t you see this job is a joke?” he asks her. When his poor attitude costs him his job, he can’t admit that it’s his fault. Instead, he takes out his resentment on his colleague.

Giles is unflinching in portraying how men enable and excuse entitled behaviour in themselves. Not only do they refuse to take personal responsibility for their behaviour, they can’t even see how one-sided their expectations are. Del’s inability to face the possibility of a painful ‘no’ pushes him to force his attentions on Kiera, and seek refuge in anger when his expectations are not met. It is only when his beloved sister, Cressie, reveals a terrible secret that he is forced to take a good, hard look at who he really is.

And not only him.

Del’s father has been belittling Del’s mother for going to church, without ever asking her why she needed support from her faith. She was worried about what might happen to Cressie when she left home and felt powerless to protect her. She tells her husband and son that it shouldn’t have taken this assault for them to listen to her. Del’s best friend, Qwan, nearly loses the woman he loves when he casually disrespects her at a party.

Del is told a hard truth by the women in his life, but he’s able to face up to it because of the men who come forward and share their own mistakes with him. I find it infuriating when men don’t listen to women, but recognize that it sometimes takes male allies to help turn things around. Del’s father accepts responsibility in front of the entire family for goading Del on with Kiera. Del’s sex ed teacher reveals that he ‘keyed on’ a girl when he was Del’s age and was called a harrasser. “Notice how you get most mad when the truth is something you don’t like?” He says to Del.

Giles works hard to make sure that Del is more than a thoughtless, entitled jerk. Del genuinely loves his sister, and turns out to be a genuine support to Kiera’s bestie, Jameer, as he copes with his rigid and cruel parents. He also takes on an ultra-conservative pastor at his church. Giles gives him a wickedly sarcastic sense of humour that had me laughing out loud on more than one occasion.

Highly recommended, especially for boys aged 13 and up. Teenage girls however, may have no patience with Del and his friends. (#TPL)

Thanks for being a Bookcase Bizarro reader! I’ll be back next month with more author news, and more MG and YA book reviews. See you then!

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