MG Book Review: ALL FOUR STARS

All Four Stars by Tara Dairman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Eleven-year-old, Gladys Gatsby has kept her cooking a secret for years. Until the day her parents come home early from work and discover she’s torched the kitchen curtains.
Gladys simply wanted to caramelize the crème brûlée she’d made. If she had the proper tools it would never have happened. Now she’s banned from cooking altogether, banned from the Planet Food channel, even from cook books for the next sixth months.

Her parents want Gladys to do “normal” kid things, like play more computer games, or go to the mall, and make more friends in general, instead of this cooking thing, which they don’t understand. Her parents’ idea of cooking is to not follow the directions, and throw everything into a microwave. Everything! Even chocolate chip cookies. Though most nights her parents would rather just stop at Pathetti’s Pizza, Fred’s Fried Fowl, or Sticky burgers. Gladys fears she’ll starve over the next sixth months.

Her Aunt Lydia, who lives in Paris, has been the beacon of good food in Glady’s life. “On any given day she might offer her niece a dried persimmon dipped in chocolate, a lavender-flavored sandwich cookie, or a pretzel coated with a green powder called wasabi . . .” When Glady was seven, she secretly brought Gladys into New York City to taste what a real restaurant was like. Gladys’s life changed.

It’s a new year. Glady’s enters the sixth grade, and dreams of pho bo—the Vietnamese beef and noodle-filled breakfast soup she cooked in fourth grade. She keeps notes in the food journal her aunt Lydia sent. But Gladys would never tell the kids at school about her gourmet tastes or talents—they’d only think she was even more of a freak.

Gladys’s new teacher Ms. Quincy wants the class to write an essay for the New York Standard about what they want to do in the future. One will be chosen to represent the school. Gladys is hesitant because she doesn’t want the kids to know that ever since she read her first dinning section of the New York Standard--the newspaper banned by her town--she’s wanted to write food reviews for them. Gladys struggles to write the essay. She doesn’t want to be singled out by her classmates--and if her parents find out what she really wants to do they’d “totally freak” and probably extend her sentence.

But the new boy next-door, Sandy, pushes Gladys to write about what’s really in her heart. A twist of fate turns the tide, and Gladys finds herself the position she’s only ever dreamed of. She will be challenged, and she’ll have to figure out a way to make her dreams happen on her own. I loved this story. This is an ideal book to give to any young budding chefs, or foodies.

Warning: You will become very, very hungry while reading this book. It inspired me to get back in the kitchen and cook up something exotic and delicious. And was so much fun to read. ALL FOUR STARS gets five stars by me.







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The Garden Meditation.

A garden for rest, respite, and revisiting thoughts -- or having no thoughts.

The flowers whisper with me; be still as the wind bows down, a whiff, and a lighter, heart-felt song of a stringed tempest.

A past that is at once familiar: A window opens then shifts before my body-self can understand.

It’s all right. Everything’s as it should be. The tempest came as I called it (just now), tickling me. I feel love wrapped in awe. Everything’s alive.

Thoughts are most crucial and must be guided.

I guard, and my guardian guards me, ancestors of the past?

I recall these things as I sit in this garden, the flowers speak to me: watch and listen, they show me. They do not “tell” me.

Pink slides romantic notions, yellow and gold, the sun’s glory unfolds, deep pink in longing and desire. Green heals; it absorbs and gives nourishment, ideas, and inspiration.

White bleeding hearts dip languidly, peacefully; everything around me, coalesces, more swirls form, again, a tempest spins into this spot I sit in the garden.

100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith

100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book began with a curious statement about a boy, who isn’t exactly sure where he comes from. And he’s not the only one to believe he came from his father’s work of fiction. The story he wrote about a boy, named Finn, just like his son, who was an epileptic, just like his son, with clipped wings –unlike his son. Though Finn does have markings from the childhood accident that left him with vertebrae pins and a dead mother when a horse fell from a bridge—100 Sideways Miles on top of them. It doesn’t help that the human eating aliens in his father’s book have the exact scars Finn has on his back. Finn has to remind everyone it’s just a story. Fiction. Get over it. But Finn cannot.

Sixteen year-old, Finn Easton carries the weight of believing he is the character in the pages of his father’s book. But he wants to write his own story. Like many adolescents who fall under the weight of their parents’ beliefs, and life styles, we try and break free. It’s only when we become adults and move away from our parents that we can charts our own course, and see our own free will in action. Until then, we struggle to map our individual identity.

And Finn has a good buddy Cade Hernandez, to help on his journey, the extrovert, and Cade looks after him. Finn, the introvert, idolizes all the crazy antics Cade does and is. Cade Hernandez was like a God. He had the ability to make anyone do what ever he wanted. Including Finn. I couldn’t help thinking about the similarity of the friendship between Gene and Phineas in the classic, Separate Peace by John Knowles, with how much Gene idolized Phineas. Cade and Finn are complete opposites, the yin and yan of each other, and have been good friends since Finn was ten years old. Though Finn’s father doesn’t care for Cade, because he’s everything he doesn’t want his son to become. Cade is brash, and reckless, outspoken, and speaks in some pretty graphic dialogue. The dialogue rang true for teen boys (I have two teen boys), messing around. And Cade, the prankster and joker, messes with everyone.
There’s a lot of quirk in this story, which I love. Finn believes distance is more important than time. Twenty miles per second, which is how fast the Earth is spinning. I love Finn’s internal dialogue, the way he thinks. How everything is on a much grander scale than what we see. The poetic lens he sees through.

The smell of sweet flowers, always signal to Finn he’s about to have an epileptic seizer. He usually wakes up from these episodes, covered in urine, angry, and empty of all thoughts, until his life returns, until he can remember where he is.

One day, after his father, and the only Mom he remembers, leave for New York City, Finn collapses at home.
Naked and soaked in urine, with his ever faithful dog by his side—he is discovered by the “most beautiful girl he’d ever seen” Julia Bishop. She’s new at school and turns out she lives up the canyon from him.

So between Cade and Julia, they help show Finn a way to write his own story. Adventure ensues. Love blossoms. And the boys become heroes in the process. I enjoyed this book very much, and I think my sixteen year old will find many truths he can to relate to.


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Open Letter to the NYCDOE

Today is the day many kids wait for with eagerness and a little anxiety. Today, and the days leading up to it have been filled with tension and pockets of hope for our family as we navigated the New York City High School process.

My eldest son didn’t have to go through this. He stayed in the high school that was a part of his middle school. A new school with knocks and pangs, but the issues smoothed out, and he did wonderfully there.

The high school process begins at the beginning of the 8^th grade, with tours, auditions, essays, and dreams. And slowly erodes into the maybe, the okay, and this could ruin my future.

Our son, bright, kind, contentious, had an 86 average, throughout his school career. Always scored 3-4 on NYS tests --until the pivotal year of 7^th grade. He scored lower. It looked like another kid’s.  But the SYSTEM only accounts for the 7^th grade. Not the whole child, not how he’s preformed over the years, or whom he is, only judging from one test.

We were assured that our choice schools wouldn’t look to higher scoring kids, but when faced with the choice, they threw out their words and picked the kids with the highest scores and grades. Who could blame them? However, we lost spots, made ill-informed decisions with placing hard to get spots first on our list. Our middle school guidance told us “it happens”  --if your score is close enough, go ahead and try, since they take 85 and above. Boom–boom--our top two spots shut down. Spots three and four wouldn’t take us, because we didn’t put them first on “the list”.

This is NYC there is always a list to get in.

So today I sent my son to a school we’ve never toured, know little to nothing about. In a huge over-crowded building that took forty-five minutes to get past the metal detector. This was another case of an ill-informed decision when our middle-school guidance said to put more than one school choice on the second round—or we wouldn't get an appeal. Our appeal is valid. But it didn’t pass the guardian’s at the gate of the DOE.

Today I wait in trepidation for my fourteen-year-old to return home. Last night he was ready to end his school career. He comes from top performing schools and is now in a struggling school.  Thanks DOE, you didn’t just leave this child behind, you may of ruined his continued success.

As sychronicity runs strong through my life, last weekend I hear about Nikkole Salter's play of what many working/stuggling families are going through:

Nikkole Salter's Play:  LINES IN THE DUST

When Denitra loses the charter school lottery for her daughter, she must find another way to escape from their underperforming neighborhood school. The answer seems like a risk well worth taking but may end up requiring a bigger sacrifice than she ever could have imagined. It's been exactly 60 years since Brown Versus The Board of Education. Lines In The Dust questions how far we've come and more importantly, where we go from here.

Where do we go from here? How can we make the changes our kids need?

My interview with 14 year old about his favorite book: The Enemy by Charles Higson

And what hooked him. Hint: "The Characters!"
on the Kidliterati Blog: Kidliterati Ten

What Do You Do In-between Manuscripts?

Here I sit, at an impasse. Finished two novels and querying one, somewhat, with the other on hold. I have a NaNoWriMo rough draft I'm just dying to revise on my fancy Scrivener program. It's going slow with Scrivener being a huge learning curve for me. I'm unsure of what's  in store for my two "revised" manuscripts and should probably hold off before I begin another.  Maybe?  So in the meantime . . .

I’m playing around with Scrivener and learning its features by writing short stories. I usually enter writing contests or flash fiction, to keep the ol' brain muscle flexible. I like to jump around genres and POVs with each story, figuring this is a good exercise. Write about people I've never been, or want to be, people who scare me, or I don't understand, situations that change us, dreams of a better world. Valid reasons to tell a tale I suppose. 

If I write everyday I’ll develop into a better writer, one that gets published. Right? That’s the mantra I repeat every morning. That’s when my internal world will finally see the light of readers. If I’ve touched their hearts as much as my own—then it’s the ultimate dream to reality.

I write mostly at the day job, lucky to have a place that's quiet enough (except for the kids’ chess camp). In the mornings I can usually clock in a few hours, before the bustle. Did I mention we have espresso on tap? 

Anne Lamont says the joy is in the writing itself -- and it is.  It's a lifesaver for me. When the world and my family -- and their problems, become too much, I'm happy to have an escape. It's a personal journey, one most writers long to share with readers. Of all the arts I love and experienced: singing, painting, sculpture -- writing a novel has been the most fulfilling. I feel most connected to the world somehow. I may open a page and pick up writing where I left off, and find myself surrounded by the scene in some way similar to what I’m writing.  An example is when I wrote a hospital scene for a book, years ago, and found myself in the hospital (comp book in bag) writing a scene in a hospital. Those were the days I used to carry a composition book around with my little two boys in tow. Writing wherever, and whenever I could squeeze in a few pages.  I’ve come a little further on this journey. I have a set writing schedule. This is huge. I can organize myself much better. . . and in time, who knows. 

So, what do you do when waiting for beat readers to finish with your manuscript? Or waiting for editors notes, or just waiting?  I’m going to work on the short stories of wild and crazy ideas I love to entertain -- and if I’m lucky, if it’s pertinent, I just might get one published.  Keep writing. 

-- ( it's the fun part) 

* Had trouble finding Ann Lamont's exact quote. But here's a slew of some of the BEST quotes on Writing and they're from Ann Lamont. 
Thank you, Ann!  We need these. 

YA Book Review: COMPULSION by Martina Boone

"The sense of place is the first thing that takes hold of you. The visual descriptions set you into the dreamy, hot and steamy southern charm of Charleston, South Carolina. Drawing you into a compelling world of oak and cypress woods, Spanish moss, and sprawling southern plantations. Where disturbed characters, unspoken family secrets, and a dark curse hooks you. You won’t want to leave Watson Landing. "

Read more on the Kidliterati Blog:

My Review of COMPULSION by Martina Boone: