Stacked Shelves

Oh, Gary Schmidt, I am torn about your new book. You tried to do something with What Came From the Stars and it doesn’t work. That’s not to say that there were parts of this book that were beautifully written and definitely what I would expect for you (I loved Okay for Now ). But, boy, did you need an editor. There’s far too much going on in this book. First, that parallel story running in this book? You know, the battles on the distant planet. The world creation. The crazy words. To paraphrase Senator Lloyd Bentsen, Gary Schmidt, you are no J.R.R. Tolkien. I’ve read Tolkien, and you are not Tolkien Actually, the whole distant-planet story is a little too reminiscent of the tale Tolkien tells in The Silmarillion . In Tolkien’s world, the Valar (you call them Valorim) create a world for elves and men (you call them Ethelim and O’Mondin), but there’s this bad guy called Melkor (you use the name Mondus). Melkor destroys lots of things and causes the Valar to move out of Midd...

Jessica Khoury’s Origin , which has gotten good reviews from journals like Kirkus , is a great gateway book. And by this I mean that it can lead librarians and teens, or teachers and teens, to a host of other books and start great discussions. I mean no disrespect to Ms. Khoury when I say that I was reminded of several other books while reading Origin . This is not to say the story is not, excuse the word, original. In some ways, it is. But it also has a little of Flowers for Algernon (by Daniel Keyes) and The House of the Scorpion (by Nancy Farmer) in it. There’s even a Romeo and Juliet- like scene near the end, and there’s a sequence of native Amazonians dancing that reminded me of Peter Pan visiting Tiger Lily’s camp (I’m sorry to say). Origin tells the story of Pia, an immortal girl. She was created through years of genetic research and lives deep in the Amazon forest, where scientists working for the Corpus conglomerate have kept her hidden (and imprisoned). Pia longs for t...