Features archive | BookPage

by Angela Leeper

National debates on education reform have never been fiercer. Four new memoirs that range from inspiring to determined to hilarious fuel the discussion as their authors reflect on challenges and innovations in public schools, charter schools, educational nonprofit programs and even homeschooling.

ROOKIE IN THE CLASSROOM
Before his successful career in acting, Tony Danza earned a degree in history education, fully intending to become a teacher. When he found himself pushing 60, separated from his wife of more than 20 years and dealing with the cancellation of his talk show, Danza decided to return to his first, unfulfilled passion: teaching. His year spent as a 10th grade English teacher at Northeast High, an inner-city public school in Philadelphia, was depicted in the brief 2010 A&E television series, “Teach.” In I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had, to be published in September, he gives an enlightening, behind-the-scenes look at what happened when the cameras weren’t filming.

In his toughest role yet, with his harshest critics seated right in front of him, a tearful and frustrated Danza struggles to uphold the school’s mantra—“engage the students.” Often at odds with his producers, who only want to heighten the drama for television, he fights to keep his experience as authentic as possible for both himself and his students. His observations about teaching, from wondering how technology will shape the way kids learn to the emphasis on testing, echo common national concerns. With the help of his “half-sandwich club,” based on his father’s practice of sharing his sandwiches, he reaches out to any student in need. Ultimately finding teaching to be rewarding yet emotionally grueling, Danza brings the profession the recognition it deserves in this touching and candid account.

A BORN LEADER
Founder and CEO of Harlem Village Academies Deborah Kenny has always believed in social justice, but after her husband’s death from leukemia in 2001, she realized that if she really wanted to make a difference in the world, she would have to put her sadness aside. Born to Rise chronicles her arduous path to open not one but two charter schools in Harlem neighborhoods that had some of New York’s lowest test scores. In a time when there was little information on starting a charter school in the state of New York, Kenny quit her job and raised her three children on her meager savings while building the schools’ framework, seeking startup funding and performing hundreds of other pivotal tasks.

Deciding early on that an ideal school should focus on hiring and developing superior teachers rather than setting up a curriculum to be strictly followed, Kenny revolutionized public education. Her heartfelt narration reveals numerous mistakes along the way, from not remembering to have the school building unlocked on the first day to forgetting her own sense of fun amid the business of running a school, and celebrates such triumphs as ranking first in math scores across the state’s public schools and the bittersweet farewell of Harlem Village Academies’ first high school graduates. In the process of building these schools, Kenny realizes that she’s also built a culture and community. Anyone interested in school reform—whether parents, teachers or leaders—should begin with this powerful story.

ANNUAL GIVING
A Year Up by Gerald Chertavian shows that school age children are not America’s only underserved population. As the nation’s demand for high-quality, entry-level workers increases, an estimated 5 million young adults ages 18-24 are currently unemployed and don’t possess more than a high school diploma. Suddenly a multi-millionaire when his startup dot-com business was sold and inspired by his “little brother” David, from the Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring program, social entrepreneur Chertavian created Year Up, a nonprofit workforce development program for urban young adults, in 2000. Starting with 22 students from Boston’s tough inner-city neighborhoods, the thriving program has spread to eight additional cities.

Chertavian describes with sincerity and detail the journey toward implementing this one-year program that combines marketable computer skills with professional skills, followed by an internship with a top company. He also profiles numerous students and staff who have overcome such hardships as homelessness, poverty, neighborhoods infested with drugs and violence, limited education and the responsibilities of single parenting. Some of his key decisions, like placing Year Up centers in downtown financial districts to get students out of their dangerous neighborhoods and into the setting of the corporate world, reveal the secrets of his success. Most importantly, Chertavian demonstrates that an investment in America’s young people is an investment in America’s future.

NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Frustrated by her daughter Alice’s constant finagling out of doing her math homework and not, as they say, “reaching her full potential,” Quinn Cummings decided to give homeschooling a try for one year. Assuming that the homeschool movement began in the U.S. during colonial times (it did start in the U.S., but not until 1982), she gives herself homework, exploring the nearly 2 million homeschooled children and myriad homeschooling philosophies. The result is the frank and irreverent The Year of Learning Dangerously: Adventures in Homeschooling in which the former child actor from The Goodbye Girl and the 1970s television drama “Family” searches for the ideal way to homeschool her daughter (and validate her decision).

Cummings doesn’t limit her information gathering to Google searches. She observes children without limits at a Radical Unschooling conference in Boston, chaperones a Christian homeschool prom in Indiana, sneaks into the Sacramento convention of a secretive, ultra-authoritarian Christian sect and engages in other laugh-out-loud encounters, all in the name of research. Hearing over and over again about the doomed fate of homeschoolers—no socialization—she interjects French lessons, team sports and the playground into Alice’s repertoire, all with mixed results. Realizing that some of Alice’s best learning—and bonding—occurred on their routine hikes, Cummings also discovers that there’s no typical homeschool family, just as giving children their best start isn’t limited to one curriculum.

ROOKIE IN THE CLASSROOM

Biography, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Biography

50 years later, her star still shines

Feature by Pat H. Broeske

by Pat H. Broeske

The passage of time and occasional discoveries of new source materials have made Marilyn Monroe an ever-evolving presence. Marking the 50th anniversary of her death on August 5, 1962, two revisionist biographies offer divergent views of the blonde icon.

Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox, by USC gender studies professor, feminist historian and unabashed Monroe fan Lois Banner, seeks to quash the notion of Monroe as damaged victim. Marilyn is instead the one on top—a smart cookie, largely in control of her self-created sexy persona and career.

Adept at depicting time and place in authentic detail, Banner digs deep into the fractured childhood of Norma Jeane Mortenson, showing that Monroe exaggerated chapters of her life (her foster families were relatives/friends, not total strangers), while downplaying probable childhood sexual abuse.

Growing up in the shadow of Southern California’s film industry, Monroe did more than dream of stardom; she set out to make it happen. After being snapped by a photographer for a recruiting magazine, she became an eager and astute photo subject, then a possible “party girl” (serving up sex and drinks to the powerful) and studio contract player. Her star was rising when rumors hit that she’d once posed nude for a calendar pin-up. Instead of today’s typical insincere apology, Monroe owned up to it. Asked if she had anything on during the shoot, she quipped, “The radio.”

Seeking self-improvement she frequented bookstores, took classes at UCLA, studied acting. She confounded studio executives by wanting control over her movies, and infuriated the same crowd when she went out without donning underwear.

Banner takes us through the films, love affairs, the shrinks, the medication and a pivotal weekend during which something murky transpired at Frank Sinatra’s Cal Neva Lodge. A drunken Monroe may have been sexually violated; she was certainly humiliated. Days later she was dead, at 36. Banner recounts various Monroe death theories, including those with a conspiratorial edge involving the Kennedys, and wonders if, had she lived, she would have embraced the sisterhood of feminism.

In Marilyn Monroe: The Final Years British author Keith Badman charts similar biographical terrain, but steadfastly refutes an affair with JFK—beyond a one-nighter—and shoots down a rumored RFK romance. Itineraries prove both were logistically impossible, Badman argues. He also claims to have solved the mystery of Monroe’s death, via copious data regarding her lengthy use of prescription meds. Well, maybe. . . .

Like Banner, he delves into the creepy goings-on at Cal Neva, while taking a magnifying glass to the actresses’ final films, The Misfits and the never-completed Something’s Got to Give.

Author of books on the Beach Boys, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Badman is gifted at depicting Monroe’s colorful supporting cast, including longtime acting coach Paula Strasberg (dubbed Black Bart by crew members) and publicist Pat Newcomb, who remains a tantalizing figure in the life of the ultimate mystery woman.

Author Pat H. Broeske is also a Hollywood journalist whose byline appears in the latest issue of Emmy magazine.

Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox, by…

Start at the very beginning

Feature by bookpagedev

Discovering a new favorite writer is one of the joys of life for any reader. And while it’s exciting to find that your new obsession has a lengthy backlist, there’s something especially satisfying about knowing you’ve been with them from book one. Here are 10 notable summer debuts—pick one up now, and you can say you knew them when.

Memoir

Memoir

The stuff Olympic dreams are made of

Feature by Martin Brady

by Martin Brady

What does it take to become an Olympic athlete? Three top competitors—including two Olympic veterans and one who will participate in this summer’s games—have crafted memoirs that describe their early life challenges and their struggles to achieve on the world athletic stage.

Swimmer Amanda Beard has competed in every Olympics since 1996, gaining a total of seven medals, including two gold. She participated in 2008 without medaling and fell just short of qualifying this year (at the age of 30). In the Water They Can’t See You Cry, co-written with Rebecca Paley, is Beard’s account of her personal life and her Olympic experiences, a journey strewn with disappointments—from her parents’ divorce to her own struggle with self-esteem and body image issues, including episodes of self-mutilation. Beard's narrative is heartfelt, and she ably recounts the confusion of her youth and the dedication to swimming that helped her push through the uncertainty found in other areas of her life. With athletic success have come opportunities in self-marketing and product endorsements and especially high-profile modeling gigs with Maxim, FHM and Playboy, all of which Beard has embraced in the spirit of savvy entrepreneurship while continuing to strive in the pool. Yet she has also found happiness in marriage and motherhood, and appears now to have finally balanced her professional endeavors with personal satisfaction. Her memoir also provides interesting viewpoints on the Olympic social culture at the games in Atlanta, Sydney, Athens and Beijing, and serves as a readable profile of an athlete who first achieved internationally as a teenager, then continued to compete in spite of physical changes (specifically, a sudden growth spurt in late adolescence) and emotional upheavals.

Lopez Lomong’s upbringing in Africa is in stark contrast to Beard’s California experience. Still a boy when separated from his parents and siblings during civil war in his native Sudan, Lomong ended up in a U.N. refugee camp in Kenya, where, under the auspices of Catholic Charities, he was eventually accorded an opportunity to emigrate to the United States, where he was adopted by a supportive foster family in Syracuse, New York. Co-authored by Mark Tabb, Lomong’s Running for My Life: One Lost Boy’s Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games relates the frightening and almost miraculous tale of his survival in Africa, his adjustment to America (including gaining citizenship in 2007), and his transition from talented soccer player to world-class distance runner with Olympic aspirations. Lomong was the 2008 Olympic flag bearer for the U.S. in Beijing and will compete in London in the 5,000-meter race. Lomong’s inspiring memoir also includes the back-story on an HBO feature in which he returned to Africa to reunite with his parents, whom he thought were dead, and his brothers, who eventually immigrated to the U.S.

Reigning Olympic decathlon champion Bryan Clay won the silver medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics and took the gold in ’08 in Beijing. (In June, at the U.S. Olympic trials, Clay clipped a hurdle and failed to qualify for the London games.) In Redemption: A Rebellious Spirit, a Praying Mother, and the Unlikely Path to Olympic Gold, co-written with Joel Kilpatrick, Clay reveals that his journey has been one of emotional as well as physical challenge. Like Beard a child of divorce, he dealt with serious anger issues through his younger years, seeking out opportunities to party hard in his adolescence even while gaining strength as a multifaceted athlete. His mother’s religious influence played a key role in Clay enrolling in California’s small Azusa Pacific University, a stoutly Christian college but one that also boasts a strong track and field program. There, Clay honed his competitive skills, met the woman who would become his wife, and found comfort in commitment to his Christian faith—all on his way to Olympic glory.

Swimmer Amanda Beard has…

Fiction

Fiction

Dealing with life’s trials and tribulations

Feature by Sandy Amazeen

by Sandy Amazeen

Strength of character and overcoming hardship to discover better times ahead are the central themes of three delightful new fiction releases that will warm the heart.

Gabriel Clarke was born to be on “The River”—his father and grandfather were whitewater guides who appreciated all the subtle nuances and moods of the Whitefire River, deep in the Colorado Rockies. But when he was five, Gabriel’s world was ripped asunder when his father’s attempt to save a kayaker went horribly wrong. After moving to live with his mother in Cairo, Kansas, fun-loving Gabriel becomes insecure and withdrawn. Years later, a job with a rafting company offers Gabriel the opportunity to reconnect in full—not only with The River, but also with his past—but only if he has the strength of character to move beyond his anger and childhood pain.

Michael Neale’s The River gently sweeps readers along like a leaf in a current as Gabriel struggles with beginning a new life after a terrible loss. Throughout this artfully crafted story is a genuine sense of The River as a force of nature to be reckoned with, respected and learned from.

LOVE, ITALIAN-STYLE
Charming and smoothly paced, The Girl in the Glass recreates the feeling of walking the streets of Florence, Italy, and is populated with warm, generous-hearted characters. Thirty-year-old Meg Pomeroy has a good job as an editor for a travel guide publisher, yet travels very little. She clings to the hope that her financially irresponsible father will make good on his promise to take her to Florence. When he finally appears to be following through, and then fails spectacularly, Meg swallows her disappointment and decides to go to Florence alone. She meets up with two of her publishing connections: author and tour guide Sofia Borelli, and photographer Lorenzo. Meg has been trying to publish Sofia’s short stories, based on the life of Sofia’s ancestor, Nora, and she has worked on projects with Lorenzo and his sister for several years. Now that she and Lorenzo have met, Meg can’t help but respond to his infectious charm. But is what she feels for Lorenzo the real deal or a travel romance?

Susan Meissner, author of The Shape of Mercy and A Sound Among the Trees, maintains a smooth pace and believable dialogue throughout—even if Meg seems a little old-fashioned. Sofia’s story is even more interesting as the painful truths of her life reveal a vulnerable, broken woman struggling to come to terms with a traumatic past.

SOUTHERN STRENGTH
Michael Morris spins an excellent yarn about a Deep South community circa World War I in Man in the Blue Moon. As a young woman, Ella Wallace was a promising art student looking forward to furthering her studies in France—but that was before she became infatuated with the charismatic, free-spending Harlan. Eighteen weary years later, Ella is disillusioned and raising three boys alone after Harlan ran away to escape his debts. Local banker Clive Gillespie can’t wait to get his hands on her piece of Florida property, which contains a natural spring with reputed healing powers, and Ella is on the verge of foreclosure when she receives notice that a clock has been delivered for her. When Ella and her boys unpack the crate, it isn’t a clock they discover but a man: Lanier Stillis, a distant cousin of Harlan, hiding from his ex-in-laws. And this is only the first of the surprises Lanier brings.

Morris encapsulates the hypocrisy, pettiness, greed and outright meanness that are often a part of small-town life, yet his story manages to avoid being too dark or depressing despite the bad things that happen to some of its characters. Don’t miss this thoughtful, poignant tale of love, loss and redemption steeped in the heat and natural beauty of the Deep South.

Strength of character and overcoming hardship to discover better times ahead are the central themes of three delightful new fiction releases that will warm the heart.

Gabriel Clarke was born to be on “The River”—his father and grandfather were whitewater guides who appreciated all the subtle…

Parenting

Parenting

Take it easy: Help for conquering stress

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

by Joanna Brichetto

It’s official: everyone is stressed out these days. Anyone who doesn’t feel anxious is either a saint, not paying attention or just kidding. The unprecedented frequency of clinical anxiety disorders arises out of a neurotic stew of economic uncertainty and our increasingly hectic day-to-day lives. BookPage has rounded up five new books, each presenting its own set of strategies for overcoming stress.

BEATING STRESS, NATURALLY
Paul Huljich knows about stress in ways that most of us can never imagine. The victim of a nervous breakdown in 1998, he suffered a terrifying loss of freedom and self-determination. But Huljich courageously constructed a happy sequel to his own Kafkaesque story. He researched various avenues for regaining his mental health, and now serves as one of the world’s leading spokespersons on mental wellbeing. In Stress Pandemic: The Lifestyle Solution, Huljich presents “9 Natural Steps to Survive, Master Stress and Live Well.” With matchless authority, he diagnoses the causes and defines the effects of our culture’s submission to stress, and then lays out his ninefold program of self-awareness and recovery. The simplicity of Huljich’s “natural steps”—including the obvious triad of exercise, nutrition and sleep—is balanced by the author’s complex account of his experience with psychiatric medications of all sorts. Here is a guru of organic healing who can be trusted, someone who has returned from the inferno of stress-induced insanity in order to reaffirm the power of the individual will.

A MEDICAL APPROACH
A clinical psychiatrist will naturally address stress in a very different way from Huljich’s holistic program. Dr. Joseph Shrand, a Harvard psychiatry instructor, provides a more dispassionate approach in Manage Your Stress, part of the Harvard Medical Health Series published by St. Martin’s Press. With a scientist’s clarity and restraint, the author, writing with Leigh M. Devine, presents a set of definitions of stress, locating it properly in its biological framework and then proceeding to an understanding of its physiological consequences. “Your body has reacted to the event of being cut off in traffic almost in the same way as if a rhinoceros had charged you,” Shrand writes, describing an individual’s response to stress. “When you experience a stress trigger your heart beats quickly, your palms and body sweat, blood rushes to your face, and your breathing quickens.” We all know the feeling, though we’re often unsure how to deal with it. Shrand draws a careful line between what a person can do for herself to overcome stress and what she must properly lay at the psychiatrist’s door when the problem becomes too large to handle. He saves his most striking (and, alas, newly stress-inducing) statement for the conclusion of the book: It turns out that our prolonged experience of stress can be epigenetically(!) passed down through our genes to our children. Thanks a lot, Dr. Shrand. Do you have an opening next Tuesday?

STRATEGIES FOR ANXIOUS YOUNGSTERS
No parent needs the looming prospect of epigenetics to understand how stressful life can be for kids nowadays. Donna B. Pincus wants to help us help our children build an entire toolbox for dealing with stress. In Growing Up Brave, Pincus, who serves as director of the Child and Adolescent Fear and Anxiety Treatment Program at Boston University, offers parents “expert strategies”for helping their children cope. By treating almost every conceivable configuration of family dynamics, the book provides a comprehensive array of do’s and don’ts, supported by well-assembled clinical evidence and numerous case studies. Whatever the problem your child is suffering—fear of the dark, fear of dogs, fear of school, or Charlie Brown’s unforgettable state of pantophobia (fear of everything)—Pincus delivers both philosophical principles and pragmatic steps for helping your child climb “the bravery ladder” and then happily throw it away at the top.

LIFE AFTER TRAUMA
We have saved the worst-case scenarios for last. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is not only one of the world’s fastest growing maladies, it has also served cultural commentators as a good metaphor for the state of our nation since 9/11. On the individual level, the after-effects of a life-threatening trauma can cripple a person physically and emotionally. In two new books on the subject, the crucial idea for confronting the enormity of trauma is resilience. Both books go so far as to claim that there is a science of resilience. For psychiatrist team Steven M. Southwick and Dennis S. Charney, Resilience is nothing less than The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges. These two physicians are not content with providing clinical data or pharmacological solutions (which are relegated to a brief appendix). They are genuine philosophers—lovers of wisdom—bent upon uncovering all possible sources of empowerment for the resilient human being, including a courageous confrontation of the moral and spiritual dimensions of the still-untapped traumas of 9/11.

Journalist Laurence Gonzales has the award-winning journalist’s knack for telling a vivid story. His Surviving Survival is filled to the brim with tales of survival, of traumas suffered and overcome. It is a gallery of terrible life-and-death moments that arrive and depart with shocking suddenness, but then linger forever in the victim’s mind—from the death of a child to a bomb blast in Iraq. The author argues that it is necessary to cultivate both “The Art and Science of Resilience,” his subtitle. Without a doubt, the first stage of this process will have been achieved by any reader who can survive the relentless litany of trauma and resilience Gonzales so vividly catalogues.

Biography, Memoir, Music, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Music Memoir Biography

Their stars still shine

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

As Pete Seeger reminds us in his now-iconic ballad, “Turn, Turn, Turn,” there’s a season for everything. This fall is the season for a cavalcade of music memoirs and biographies, books that will make music lovers weep, laugh and sing.

IT'S ONLY ROCK AND ROLL
This year the Rolling Stones will gather no moss but rake in the coin, as no fewer than four new books celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary. In music critic Philip Norman’s admiring and adoring biography of rock’s legendary bad boy, Mick Jagger, we meet the entire cast of characters who’ve feasted at the Stones’ banquet over the years—from Marianne Faithfull and Brian Jones to Jagger’s first girlfriend, Chrissie Shrimpton, Ronnie Wood and many others. At the center of it all is the canny middle-class Jagger, who carefully controlled and orchestrated his rebellious image to distinguish himself and the band from the well-scrubbed lads from Liverpool. Gathering interviews from everyone in Jagger’s life except Jagger himself, Norman takes us for a revealing walk down the moonlight mile of Jagger’s life, from his youthful embrace of the blues through the controversies surrounding the Altamont Music Festival, the arguments with band mate Keith Richards, and Jagger’s own constant need to reinvent himself as performer. Wild horses can’t drag Stones fans away from this riveting tale of a rock legend who’s still trying to find satisfaction.

MY MAN'S GOT IT MADE
In the early 1970s, one of the frequent guests at the Stones’ banquet was a star-crossed lad from Waycross, Georgia. Gram Parsons’ story is well known to many: Charming, handsome and talented young man with a trust fund grows up in a dysfunctional family, leaves home to carry his crystal voice and brilliant songwriting to music circles, rises quickly to radiant stardom, dies young in 1973 and is immortalized as the founder of cosmic American music and country rock. Journalist Bob Kealing rehearses this familiar story in his mesmerizing Calling Me Home: Gram Parsons and the Roots of Country Rock, but he also draws upon dozens of new interviews with Parsons’ family, friends and fellow musicians. Kealing offers a compulsively readable and intimate portrait of a young man who introduced the pure strains of country stars such as the Louvin Brothers and Merle Haggard to rock.

LIKE A BIRD ON A WIRE
When Leonard Cohen returned to the stage to much acclaim in 2007 after an extended absence, his fans embraced him as a long-lost pilgrim, and indeed he had been holed up in a Buddhist retreat center, looking for tranquility and order in his life. In I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen, music critic Sylvie Simmons vividly chronicles the life of a musician whose song “Hallelujah,” affirming his faith in life and love, has become one of the most-recorded songs in pop history. Simmons draws extensively on Cohen’s private archives, unpublished writings and his vast store of published writings, as well as interviews with close friends, rabbis and Buddhist monks as she traces Cohen’s path from his early life in Montreal through his rise to fame as a raspy-voiced singer-songwriter in the 1960s and ’70s, his retreat from the public eye and his return. In this elegantly crafted biography, Simmons captures the artist who, in spite of all his highs and lows, is still sharp at the edges, a wise old monk, a trouper offering up himself and his songs.

AIN'T I A WOMAN
While Cohen has recently returned to the music scene, soul singer Bettye LaVette never left it, and she’s finally getting some long-overdue recognition for her powerful, heart-wrenching singing. Unflinchingly honest, LaVette, with writer David Ritz, shares the searing story of her struggle to gain recognition for her tremendous talent—praised by her friends Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and others—and the many obstacles along the way that kept her from stardom in A Woman Like Me. As a teenager, she hit the charts with “My Man—He’s a Lovin’ Man,” and though life continued to push her down, LaVette never lost hope. Her stunning rendition of the Who’s “Love Reign o’er Me” at the Kennedy Center Honors catapulted her back into the spotlight in 2008. Energetic and frank, LaVette’s unforgettable memoir spotlights a star that still shines.

THE GAMBLER
On a train bound for nowhere, country legend Kenny Rogers met up with success. In his aw-shucks, sit-down-and-listen-for-a-spell memoir, Luck or Something Like It, the singer-songwriter who has sold tens of millions of records asks us onto his front porch as he reminisces in never-before-told stories about his upbringing in a poor part of Houston, his love for his parents and family, his love of music at an early age, his five marriages and his artistic partnerships with Dolly Parton and Barry Gibb, among others. With a twinkle in his eye and a song in his heart, Rogers gracefully recalls the ups and downs on his wild ride to fame, grateful to have had the good fortune to remain in the spotlight as an entertainer for more than 50 years.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE
Read a review of Neil Young’s Waging Heavy Peace.

IT'S ONLY ROCK AND ROLL
This…

Fiction

Fiction

Zombies, demons, werewolves and fairy tales

Feature by Michael Alec Rose

by Michael Alec Rose

The news industry has always threatened to doom horror fiction to redundancy. How can any writer outdo the nightmare reality of the "developing stories" on CNN? Fortunately, masters of the genre don't even try. Instead, they play riffs on the "standards" of horror, and a different kind of news emerges. It's not what you tell that matters, it's how you tell it. That's what horror fans call a "developing story."

David Wong (a pseudonym) is the champion of slackers and couch potatoes everywhere. In This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It, Wong’s hilarious fictive self muddles through a series of epic disasters unleashed by his own slacking. Just as well: Only a full-throttle global apocalypse could relieve Wong’s boredom and absolute societal redundancy. You know you’re in for it when the therapist assigned to “cure” you by the police (because you’ve persuaded them you’re a borderline psychopath) is creepier by far than any of the invisible spiders-who-turn-people-into-zombies which only you and your slacker friend John can see. True to his schlemiel essence, Wong hardly has to lift a finger for all bloody hell to break loose. When it does, he’s invariably caught somewhere between the feelings of “Oh, sh—!” and “Bring it on, man!” As in his first novel John Dies at the End, Wong makes no bones (and there are plenty of ‘em, poking out of bleeding flesh) about annoying every authority figure in sight, including grammar fascists like me. With sublime contempt for literary decorum, Wong not only uses “lay” when he should use “lie”; he then conjugates the error throughout with aplomb. This book is full of slacking: seriously, dude, lay down on the couch and read it.

Victor LaValle’s The Devil in Silver feels like a grand symphonic variation on Ken Kesey’s horrific “chamber music” in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. LaValle makes explicit his tribute to that great novel. At one point, his hapless hero Pepper, an inadvertent mental-ward inmate, imagines himself as Kesey’s “Chief,” busting out of the place by tossing a heavy object through the window. Nothing could surpass the horror of Kesey’s finale, so LaValle gives the reader something else to worry about besides a lobotomy: the possibility that the inmates are menaced by a devil from Hell at loose in the ward. In The Devil in Silver, as in every worthy horror story, the threat of the supernatural plays second fiddle to a humane gallery of lovable characters in the ward, all of whom might just be crazier than we are. Pepper’s obvious sanity (like McMurphy’s in Cuckoo’s Nest) exposes the real horror: the insanity of the institution itself.

HISTORY'S HORRORS
The last two novels derive their superior quality from a subtle infusion of 20th-century history, the horrors of which run like a dark conscience through both narratives. With Breed, mainstream author Scott Spencer changes his name to Chase Novak and bursts out fully armed as a knight of horror, dubbed by none other than Stephen King in the cover blurb. King is justified in his enthusiasm for Breed: It’s hard to imagine a more twisted or timely riff on the theme of lycanthropy, whereby the monsters must fend off a desire to devour their own children. Best of all, the novel serves up a vivid allegory on the malaise and corruption of formerly Communist countries in Eastern Europe. Novak may not be doing the tourist trade of Slovenia any good, but he does a shattered world of good for both the tragic history of the Soviet bloc and the geographic legacy of the horror novel.

There is just one word potent enough to describe Stefan Kiesbye’s Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone: sublime. The notion of the “sublime”—whatever exceeds our understanding or violates the dictates of our senses, inspiring both terror and wonder—nurtured the poetry of Schiller, the music of Beethoven and (most pertinent here) the bloodthirsty tales of the Brothers Grimm. Born and raised in Germany, Kiesbye digs deep into the sublime vein of his homeland’s literary tradition and comes up with horrific gold. But Kiesbye benefits too from the literature of his adopted United States: The multiple narrative voices of Faulkner work like a dark charm, as four children from a German village bear witness to the fundamental evil of the place, and to their own chilling soullessness. The ongoing rumors of a witch or demon preying upon the village can’t stand up to the comprehensive horror of what transpired nearby, in the barracks, in the crematoria, behind the barbed wire, under the Third Reich. There is no greater horror than this: the sins of the fathers visited upon the children, beyond any hope of redemption.

Children's & YA, Picture Book

Children's & YA Picture Book

Treats for little tricksters

Feature by Alice Cary

by Alice Cary

Friendly ghosts can be comforting, especially to young goblins who may find Halloween a little overwhelming. I’m dating myself with this admission, but I grew up watching “Casper, the Friendly Ghost” every Saturday morning on TV. Here are some newly created ghosts waiting to befriend the latest generation of Halloween revelers.

A GHOST OF YOUR VERY OWN
Start with My First Ghost by Maggie Miller and Michael Leviton, which is loads of fun and, as the cover boasts, comes with a “Free GHOST INSIDE!” Just turn the page, the text says, to claim yours, but first be sure you’re ready to take on the responsibility.

Miller and Leviton offer a humorous owner’s manual, explaining, for instance, how ghosts are better than pets and siblings (“Your ghost will never punch your arm” or “sing annoying songs for hours on end”). Young readers will enjoy the activity suggestions (hide and seek, invite another ghost over), as well as the warnings (“Ghosts are very bad at catch”).

Stephanie Buscema’s energetic illustrations have a delightful retro feel, reminiscent of the 1960s and 1970s, yet with a modern twist. My First Ghost will bring reassuring smiles to young trick-or-treaters, who will be pleased to learn that “If you love your ghost, your ghost will haunt you forever.”

SURPRISE GUESTS
Halloween has finally arrived in Leo Landry’s Trick or Treat, which means that a charming little ghost named Oliver is getting ready to throw his annual party. As he cleans house and doles out invitations to several witches and skeletons, he unknowingly drops one, which is found by two young trick-or-treaters.

When this twosome arrives at Oliver’s doorstep on party night, Oliver and his guests are initially perplexed about what to do. Not to worry, of course—much fun ensues, and new friendships are formed. Landry’s watercolor-and-pencil illustrations are a perfect match for the text: gentle, straightforward and sure to please anxious, eager youngsters.

NEVER FEAR!
Another comforting book is Susan Hood’s Just Say BOO!, which is sure to be a read-aloud hit with its resounding chorus, featured in the title and throughout the book. Fun and fear go hand in hand on this creepy holiday, and Just Say BOO! will help youngsters navigate that wobbly tightrope between the two.

As a group of trick-or-treaters ventures out, the book tackles the pre-school fear factor by asking a series of rhymed questions like, “If a yip and yowl make you shiver and scowl, what do you say?” Just Say BOO! gives little ones the ammunition they need to conquer their jitters in a boisterous, humorous manner. Jed Henry’s illustrations feature cute young trick-or-treaters quaking in their little boots, and then shouting “boo!” with wild abandon.

Fortune favors the bold

Feature by bookpagedev

In our four exciting choices for Teen Read Week (October 14-20), readers can root for heroes and heroines who fear near-impossible challenges with uncommon courage and a little magic.

Children's & YA, YA

Children's & YA YA

Lyrical messages for troubled teens

Feature by Cat Acree

by Cat Acree

It’s easy to love sweet teen stories filled with romance and hope, but young adult novels devoted to darker themes and harder struggles have the greatest power to change a young life. One narrative form that’s particularly effective in exploring tough teen stories is poetry—often overlooked, but nevertheless singular in its ability to explore surface and hidden emotions simultaneously. The following books, two wrenching novels-in-verse and one unconventional collection of fairy-tale poetry, seek out hope in the darkness, honoring not only the complexities of teen angst but also the strength required to take it all in stride.

NOT ALONE
New York Times best-selling author Ellen Hopkins shattered YA expectations with her debut novel-in-verse Crank, the fictionalized account of her own daughter’s addiction to meth. Her newest offering, Tilt, drops emotional bombs on three teenagers (inspired by characters from Hopkins’ adult novel Triangles) caught in the throes of love, sex, death and broken families.

Mikayla has found the boy she wants to be with for the rest of her life, but when she winds up pregnant, she discovers she must make the most difficult decision by herself. Shane struggles with what it means to be a man and, perhaps even more impossibly, what it means to be in love with a boy with HIV. Harley, the youngest of the three, is desperate to make the leap from child to young woman, always in a rush to gain male attention.

These three teens barely know who they are, let alone who they will become. At first glance, their hopes and fears—and those of their friends and family—are polarized and seem crushing to each individual. Perhaps the hardest part of being a teenager is feeling hopelessly alone with the weight of the world, but the verses in Tilt reveal the common ground of each teen’s problem, bringing them together until the crises overlap and are borne by all. Harley hits the crux:

“I Hate How Relationships / Are so fragile. How they / crack / shatter / fall to pieces. / And the hammer is / time / distance / moving forward. / Why can’t people grow / closer / tighter / welded together? / Instead they go / looking / for the next / frail connection. / There must be a way to / stay / in love / no matter what.”

Tilt creates a space where any troubled teenager can lay their fears, big or small, and find strength. With Hopkins’ poetry, they are not alone.

A LOST CHILDHOOD
With My Book of Life by Angel, Martine Leavitt swaps the spellbinding romance of her novel Keturah and Lord Death (a National Book Award finalist) for poetic fearlessness. After the death of her mother, 16-year-old Angel started stealing display shoes at the mall. There, she met Call, who claimed he loved her, doped her up with “candy” and sent her out to turn tricks. On the street, effervescent Serena takes Angel under her wing, guides her during her first months and teaches her to pray “angel, angel” when she’s afraid. When Serena disappears from her sidewalk, Angel feels compelled to help Call’s newest girl, an 11-year-old named Melli. Angel is ordered to show Melli the ropes, but instead she begins a desperate search to save the little girl, a quest she records through verse:

“When you write a poem / you get to be a baby god-girl /and in you is a tiny universe, a dollhouse universe / with planets the size of peas and suns like marbles / all inside you . . . // and if you write it good enough / you could maybe spin the world backwards / maybe I could watch myself walking backwards / walking away from Call and all the men / and putting the shoes back on the display shelf / and walking backwards until I was a dot / and disappeared.”

Angel’s poetry serves as both a record of life on the streets and a way to lift herself above the pandemonium of the world she now inhabits. One of her clients, a professor named John, asks her to read book nine of Paradise Lost when they are together, and her connections to angels grow as she learns about Eve and the creation of knowledge. She never writes of faith; the strength of her belief surpasses her ability to explain it. As Milton gave understanding to fallen angels, Leavitt gives a voice to a girl seeking salvation from an impossible cycle of drugs and violence.

WICKED TALES
Writers have long recognized the dark shadows between the lines of classic fairy tales: witches eating children, wolves eating grandmothers, curses, poisons. In contemporary retellings, such as those by Gregory Maguire, Jackson Pearce and Marissa Meyer, the simple construct of good vs. evil is replaced by muddier morals and more complex emotions.

Ron Koertge (Stoner & Spaz) goes beyond turning fairy tales upside down; in Lies, Knives, and Girls in Red Dresses, he forces them inside out, swapping Ever After magic for something sinister. Each of the 23 free-verse poems is darker than the last: Cinderella’s evil stepsisters garner pity for their loneliness; Thumbelina leaves death in her wake as she searches for love; Rapunzel silently misses her witch’s consuming devotion. Accompanying the poems are high-contrast black-and-white illustrations by Andrea Dezso that resemble Chinese papercutting. Many authors have hammered fairy tales into something wicked, but after reading this collection, the words “Once upon a time . . .” will never sound the same again.

Cookbooks, Food & Drink, Memoir

Memoir Food & Drink Cookbooks

A moveable feast: food & travel

Feature by Robert Reid

by Robert Reid

Robert Reid is the U.S. Travel Editor for Lonely Planet. In a column written exclusively for BookPage, he highlights terrific travel books, both old and new. This month, he selects some of the best books for foodies who love to travel—or travelers who love food!

I’ve long considered the bulk of travel itineraries—going to an art museum, seeing a monument, climbing a tower for a city view—as merely “the space between meals.” It’s the food that anchors the days, be it sit-down chic off the Champs d’Elysses or 50-cent noodles on plastic stools on a cracked sidewalk in Hanoi. To eat! That is to travel.

Before you set off, there are amazing food-related travel books that cover the world or focus on some of the world’s most interesting destinations.

Food Lover’s Guide to the World is an indispensable new pictorial tour through the great cuisines of the world, including travel tips and recipes if you want to bring the world back home to your kitchen. For a more literary choice, A Moveable Feast takes the Hemingway title literally, with a collection of bite-sized essays by well-known writers focused on the tasty fusion of travel and food experiences, including contributions by Anthony Bourdain, Pico Iyer and Elizabeth Eaves.

Italy always wins for foodie travel. Beth Elon’s A Culinary Traveler in Tuscany gives 10 off-the-beaten-track, recipe-filled itineraries around Italy’s most famous food and wine region. Elon arrives in lesser-known towns, like Filattiera during its July 1-4 festival La Fame e la Sete (the hunger and the thirst), where the aroma of sizzling meats hangs over the old village square filled with tables for that night’s feast.

Italian food continues in New Yorker staff writer Bill Buford’s Heat, which gives an illuminating behind-the-scenes look at a great New York Italian restaurant. After daringly inviting celeb chef Mario Batali over for dinner, Buford signs up to be a ‘kitchen slave’ at his acclaimed restaurant Babbo. The result is a fun and intimate book, where Buford learns to butcher a hog and jets off to Italy to learn more from Batali’s former teachers.

Pastry chef David Lebovitz had wanted a Paris home address since he learned that the French clip the tips of haricots verts (green beans) before tossing them in a pot—toujours! A couple of decades later his dream came true, when he left the restaurant business in San Francisco and moved to France. Lebovitz recounts his stumbles with life as an expat in Paris, along with dozens of new French-inspired recipes, in his memoir The Sweet Life in Paris. Warning: reading Lebovitz’s story may make you book a flight to the City of Light or induce uncontrollable chocolate urges.

Robert Reid is Lonely Planet’s U.S. Travel Editor. If he could choose his last meal on Earth, it would be a picnic lunch of Vietnamese imperial rolls at Nevada’s Valley of Fire State Park.

Robert Reid is the U.S. Travel Editor for Lonely Planet. In a column written exclusively for BookPage, he highlights terrific travel books, both old and new. This month, he selects some of the best books for foodies who love to travel—or travelers who love food!

Children's & YA, Picture Book

Children's & YA Picture Book

A mashup of funny and adorable monsters

Feature by Robin Smith

by Robin Smith

Kids love monsters. Actually, kids like the idea of monsters, along with that delicious feeling of being a little bit scared. However, at midnight, a child’s fear of monsters doesn’t seem quite so adorable, does it? Here are a few books to send a shiver of fear down a child’s spine without disturbing too much sleep.

A GENTLE GIANT
One of my favorite books of the season is Patrick McDonnell’s The Monsters’ Monster. Grouch, Grump and Gloom ‘n’ Doom are little monsters who mess with each other all the time. Their favorite 10 words are “No” and they argue over who is the worst monster. Each argument ends in a brawl until they work together to build the “biggest, baddest monster EVER!” In a scene out of Frankenstein, their creation is struck by lightning and comes to life. Imagine the little monsters’ surprise when the huge new monster speaks his first words, “Dank you.” This monster, though enormous, is a gentle thing and his clumsy celebration in the land of the living will amuse the youngest readers and help them reassess their fears of monsters. A gem.

THE ABCs OF MONSTERS
For children who love all sorts of monsters, The Monster Alphabet, written by Michael P. Spradlin and illustrated by Jeff Weigel, will be a perfect handbook. From Abominable Snowman to Jabberwocky to Zombies, this little volume will provide the monster aficionado with hours of delight. Our trip through the alphabet is led by a narrator who appears to be the Indiana Jones of monster seekers. Each letter is explained with a simple rhyme, telling just a little about monsters familiar and rare. Who among the uninitiated knows what a Kraken or a Redcap is. Or a quetzalcoatl? Weigel’s bold and colorful illustrations add funny and interesting details without being too terrifying. More a study guide than a story, this is the kind of book that kids love to memorize and then use to impress friends with their esoteric knowledge.

AN UNFORGETTABLE SING-ALONG
The 1960s song “Monster Mash” is one of those ditties that gets into your brain and refuses to let go. The picture book version by David Catrow, Monster Mash, is just as memorable. Catrow’s over-the-top, wild illustrations are a perfect match for the song’s catchy lyrics (“I was working in the lab late one night, when my eyes beheld an eerie sight”). From Pepto-Bismol pink to iridescent greens, Catrow’s many-eyed creatures spring to life beside guitar-wielding zombie musicians and one hilarious dancing dog. Try reading Monster Mash aloud to a group—the children will be entertained, and you’ll be humming the song to yourself for hours.

ONE BY ONE
“Ten creepy monsters met ‘neath a gnarled pine. One blew away, and then there were nine.” The early reader set will enjoy Carey F. Armstrong-Ellis’s Ten Creepy Monsters as it counts down a dwindling roster of unfortunate monsters. With rich language and a delightfully dark nighttime palette, this pleasing rhyme begs to be acted out or performed with puppets. Though the text has the bounce of a preschool finger play, the illustrations are appropriately ghoulish. The zombie holding onto his lost foot might be a bit much for the youngest reader but the rest of the illustrations are the right balance of slightly scary and funny. The final spread in the book contains a surprise that is subtly delivered, allowing any scaredy cat to be reassured.

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Zombies, demons, werewolves and fairy tales

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Fortune favors the bold

Lyrical messages for troubled teens

A moveable feast: food & travel

Robert Reid is the U.S. Travel Editor for Lonely Planet. In a column written exclusively for BookPage, he highlights terrific travel books, both old and new. This month, he selects some of the best books for foodies who love to travel—or travelers who love food!

Robert Reid is the U.S. Travel Editor for Lonely Planet. In a column written exclusively for BookPage, he highlights terrific travel books, both old and new. This month, he selects some of the best books for foodies who love to travel—or travelers who love food!

A mashup of funny and adorable monsters

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