This one's not about cows in tiaras...

Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. First-time novelist Murdock has crafted an appealing heroine in D.J. Schwenk, and girls in grades 8 and up should find her an endearing role model. Told in a steady, almost stream-of-consciousness style with everything from honesty to heartache, this book should quickly find a receptive audience of readers. It unflinchingly addresses issues such as stereotypes, parental expectations, and even gender roles with respect and humor, but does so in a sly, subtle manner.

D.J. is the only female offspring in a family of reknown athletes living in a small Wisconsin farming town obsessed with sports---especially football. Her two older football star brothers are away at college, her younger baseball star brother is constantly gone to little league games, practices, tournaments...or the dentist. Her mother is holding down two jobs just to make ends meet for the family, and her dad is temporarily disabled due to major hip surgery. Which means that all the work on their farm falls to teenage D.J. Enter family friend and neighboring rival coach Jimmy Ott who offers to help out the struggling dairy farmers by sending one of his players to work for them during the summer. Second string quarterback Brian Nelson is an okay player, but he needs some one-on-one guidance and training for the fall season, so who better to teach him than a member of the famed Schwenk football clan? Brian will work for free in exchange for football lessons. D.J. and Brian have a tense start, as school rivals tend to do, but soon get to know each other better and form an easy alliance of trainer and trainee. They milk the cows, paint & muck out the barn, jog through the woods, run sprints and passing plays on a practice field the two created in one of the heifer pastures, do conditioning exercises, and more importantly, learn to talk and listen to each other's problems Oprah-style. By the end of summer, their friendship seems to be headed to another level.....until football practice starts.

After weeks of athletic training and conditioning with Brian, D.J. has lost most of the excess weight that has always made her "big" for a girl. She is tanned, toned, and ready to shake up her little world by trying out for the Red Bend football team. How will Brian react when he finds out his trainer is now his opponent? How will D.J.'s girlfriends treat her in pads and a helmet? Will her dad stop speaking to her like he did her two older brothers? Will her mom lose her job as interim school principal if D.J. tries out for the team? Will the coach and the school board even let her play? And what about her failing grades? D.J. first has to finish some make-up work for an F in English composition from last semester before she can even try out. What's a girl to do? Read Dairy Queen and find out what one strong-willed young woman did.

This book is on the 2007-2008 Texas Lone Star Reading List of recommended titles for middle school and high school. It is available at the SMS library and carries a Young Adult (YA) sticker due to brief mature themes and some language. This is a great coming-of-age story for students who are struggling in the shadow of an older sibling, or who can't seem to find the courage to declare their independence. Hooray for realistic characters like D.J. Schwenk!

Werewolves & Vampires & Racists, oh my!

I managed to finish two new YA novels recently: My Mother the Cheerleader by Robert Sharenow and Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer.

Readers captivated by Meyer's riveting saga of vampire romance will definitely enjoy the latest book in her Twilight series. The first book introduced us to teenager Bella Swan and the mysterious Cullen family, a clan of beautiful "vegetarian" vampires who have chosen to abstain from human blood and to co-exist with them in Forks, a small hamlet among the rain-soaked woods of Washington state. Bella falls in love with Edward Cullen who seems to somehow be part of her destiny. The second book, New Moon, pulled Bella and Edward apart, tested their love, and introduced us to shape-shifting Native American Jacob Black and the age-old prejudices between vampires and werewolves. It also left readers hanging with a decision Bella was to make concerning her immortality: Will it happen, and if so, when?

Eclipse is more of the same, but it is also different. We return to the town of Forks and find that graduation is looming (after which, the Cullens have agreed to make Bella a vampire). Even though it's her senior year, the whole high school issue is basically glossed over, with very little of the plot revolving around her school days in this book. There's a serial killer on the loose in nearby Seattle, so trips into the city are out of the question. And Bella cannot visit Jacob, her steadfast best friend, because he is a werewolf. Due to her ties to the vampires, it would break treaties and bonds made between them centuries before. The sometimes over-long book (629 pages) spends a fair amount of time covering the Quileute Indian backstory of Jake's werewolf heritage. Lots of stories, not a lot of action. There's plenty of macho posturing by both Edward and Jake to win Bella's attention, and their behavior on her behalf makes Bella seem more of a spoiled brat by comparison. It isn't often that a writer makes her main character so unlikeable as Meyer does Bella, but it happens several times in Eclipse, or at least it did with me anyway. On the other hand, Meyer's use of humor sprinkled throughout the book was a welcome surprise, and I found myself grinning at some of the darker jokes.

As the days go by, and graduation gets closer, Bella must choose her fate. She wants to become immortal and be with Edward, but she must give up her family to do so. She is also worried about the change: will she be able to focus like the Cullen family and refrain from human blood? Or will her new vampire lust cause her to kill innocent people? How will her new life (after-death) affect relationships with her family and friends? Bella finally starts asking mature questions that need serious examination, then in a quick turnabout, behaves like a pouty little tease as she tries to seduce Edward before their agreed upon first time. The irony here is that the vampire is the one with morals. He insists they wait until they are married.

The serial killings in Seattle continue and turn out to be supernatural in origin: they were all victims of an army of newborn vampires created specifically to attack the Cullen's peaceful forest enclave. The city killings have been a training exercise for an upcoming battle of revenge against Edward and his family. This brings up even more issues for Bella and her decision to become immortal. Not that anything could ever persuade her to give Edward up (stubbornness in my opinion is a character flaw, not an attribute), but it makes the choice more difficult by showing her the realities of becoming a vampire.

Without revealing too much plot, Jacob has also decided he wants more from Bella, which makes her decision even more difficult. Must Bella choose between the love of her life and her devoted best friend? In a recent interview, the author said that if the first book was about finding love, and the second book was about losing love, then the third book is about choosing love. How do we decide who we are going to spend the rest of our life with? Is it better to get to know someone as a friend first, then let things eventually turn into love? Is there truly a "soulmate" out there for everyone? What if your soulmate turns out not to have a soul? Whichever one she chooses, how will the other react to her decision? These are just a few of the questions tormenting Bella as she prepares for high school graduation and what the next phase of life holds for her. Guess we'll have to wait until the 4th book, Breaking Dawn, comes out sometime in 2008 to see exactly what that is.

The second book I read this week was also about racism, but not the imaginary kind between werewolves and vampires. It was about a real incident that happened during one of the pivotal events of America's Civil Rights Movement. In My Mother the Cheerleader, author Robert Sharenow tells a fictional story of one family's experience with forced integration in a New Orleans elementary school in November 1960. A little black girl named Ruby Bridges is being escorted to class by armed guards through a crowd of white supremacists, bigots, and racists, all chanting hateful messages and calling her names. Witness to the event is 13-year-old Louise Collins, who lives with her mother in their boardinghouse in the town's Ninth Ward. Louise, like most of the other white children, has been pulled from the school because of all the prejudice and unrest. Not willing to sit idly in her room with all this excitement going on, Louise sneaks off on a spy mission to see for herself what is happening at the school. There she finds her own mother among the so-called "Cheerleaders," a group of white housewives chanting and hurling insults at the innocent little black girl. The issue gains national attention, and before long, a stranger appears on their doorstep wanting to rent a room. He is charming and intellectual, but these qualities are overshadowed by his mysterious past. The man's visit eventually becomes suspicious, and soon everything Louise thinks she knows about her mother, herself, and her world changes forever.

This book has been receiving a lot of positive press from the literary world, but I am sure there are plenty of people who will take issue with it soon enough. First off, I have a problem with the title and the cover art. Neither gives potential readers any indication of what the book is going to be about. There's also the issue that the mother is a drunk and a part-time prostitute, and the fact that a fair share of swear words, not to mention the "N-word", is used freely. Of course, I suppose it would be difficult to write about racial hatred during the early days of the Civil Rights Movement and not use that word, but still... Does this story need to be told? Yes. Could it have been told better? That's for each individual to decide.

I recommend both of these books for mature readers, preferably 8th grade and above.

Books with a Southwestern setting...

While my wife and I were in Prescott recently, we stopped downtown at a bookstore called The Worm. The saleswoman asked about my reading interests, and I told her I like Tony Hillerman's Native American mysteries set in the desert southwest, and that we had tried to visit several of the locations featured in his novels. She suggested I try J.A. Jance's books which mostly have Arizona settings for their various crime-laden plotlines.

Once back home, we went to the Paris Public Library and checked out a new audio version of the first book in her Alison Reynolds series: Edge of Evil. Frankie and I both enjoyed listening to this one--I think she even more than I--so when we returned the book-on-CD, she checked out a couple more of Jance's titles in the Sheriff Joanna Brady series. We enjoyed Edge of Evil because it was set in Sedona and Flagstaff, two towns on our trip this summer, and there were even mentions of Mingus Mountain, Verde Valley, Cottonwood, Yavapai and Coconino Counties, Tlaquepaque, and Schnebly Hill Road...all places we saw or traveled to with our cousins, Jimmy and Sheila. It was cool to be able to picture exactly where the writer was describing in her narrative.

If her other books are written in the same style as this one, I think female readers will enjoy Jance's crime novels more than men will. The author seems to be writing directly to women, encouraging and empowering them to be strong and to take control over their own lives. Nothing wrong with that, if that's what you are looking for, but I think I prefer my protatgonists to be generic enough so that everyone can relate to them.

Dangerous books for men and boys...

One of my guilty pleasures over the years has been reading Clive Cussler's adventure stories featuring swashbuckling heroes, intrepid explorers, stereotypical secret agents, and swaggering government employees working for the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA). What started in the early 1970s as good escapist fun has over the years evolved into formulaic schlock. Cussler begins each book with a unique incident, usually involving a hidden treasure from the Ancient Past. Then there's a jump to a seemingly unrelated event from more recent history, and finally the plot unfolds in the near-present with bad guys with superiority complexes doing really stupid things and getting caught by a He-Man ex-Special Ops savior with a macho name like KURT, DIRK, JOE, etc. His latest novel, The Navigator: a Novel from the NUMA Files features more of the same thing he has been churning out lately: A boatload of sailors from Ancient Phoenicia hide a sacred article somewhere in a cave near a coast. Jump to the White House in 1809 and Thomas Jefferson is fretting over moving his personal papers out of the Presidential mansion as a new commander-in-chief is sworn into office. Cut to modern day and these two apparently unconnected situations begin to relate to each other as our brave pals from NUMA enter the scene. Oh, and I almost forgot...there's always a smart, beautiful, exotic woman professor involved, and being the helpless female that she is, she finds herself needing to be rescued in the end. (Yawn!) Either Cussler is growing old and lazy (probably, since he has been using a co-author on the last few novels), or I am maturing and just getting tired of wasting my time on his horribly written junk. I think I lose a few IQ points every time I finish one of these books, so to avoid any more hazards to my mental health, this one may just have be the last of his that I try to read...

And speaking of hazards to health, RUN, don't walk, to your nearest bookstore right now and buy a copy of The Dangerous Book for Boys. Better yet, get one for every young man age 8 and above that you know! British brothers Conn and Hal Iggulden have collected into a handy reference volume things every boy (and man) should know. The topics are arranged in no particular order, so readers can pick and choose the sections they want to spend time with. Everything from Morse Code to Waterproofing Matches, How to Build a Treehouse to Common Latin Phrases, Rules of Poker to Famous Battles in History, Seven Wonders of the Ancient & Modern World, How to Juggle, on down to Five Poems Every Boy Should Know is included, as well as much, much more. I heard the other day that men in their 20's, 30's & 40's are buying this book as often for themselves as for their adolescent sons. A lot of the information is similar to what could be found in a typical Boy Scout manual, but with color illustrations and a nostalgic feel. I think the appeal of this gem of a book is that it gives permission for boys to just be boys again. This publication is the perfect remedy for all those sociologists who claim we have raised a generation of overly-sensitive wusses and unjustly-empowered princesses. Attention Librarians: this is one book that will probably fly off your non-fiction shelves once word gets out that it is available!