Blind Spot

Ellen, Laura. Blind Spot. Harcourt Children's Books, 2012.

It's a bad thing when the shelf titles other people use in Goodreads have more interesting content than the book being placed there, but that's the truth in this case.

This book sounded so good. A missing girl. A girl with a physical impairment as the main character. Some creepiness. I thought I'd fly through it because it would be so hard to stop reading.

Wow, was I ever wrong.

The main character has macular degeneration, a condition I am fairly familiar with as two of my college friends had that same condition. Her teacher must spend time reading "Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun" for fun, because he's crazy. Just plain crazy. And not following her IEP, which is illegal. And the principal believes him, not her. But I digress.

The main character doesn't have anyone in her corner except this one kid named Greg, and she doesn't even know he's the only one on her side.

The bulk of the book is filled with high school drama. Girls going out with guys to make other girls jealous, etc. etc. It was ridiculous. Between that, the mom who doesn't care about her daughter, and the freaky teacher who marks the main character absent because she won't sit in the back row ... I didn't like it.

It wasn't thrilling. The murder mystery wasn't mysterious - the reader knows who did it, and we spend the entire book waiting for the characters to catch up. This one's not worth your time, folks.

Annabel

Winter, Kathleen. Annabel. House of Anansi Press, 2010.

When Wayne was born, he had what doctors call "ambiguous genitalia," that is, he is an intersex person. His parents chose to allow the doctors to operate on their child and then raised him as a male.  However, Wayne  feels as though he has a shadow persona named Annabel, and she is starting to exert her influence over him.

I really wanted to like this story. Wayne occasionally expresses desires for feminine things, desires that are quashed by a dad who wants a very masculine son. All of that is well and good, but this story is told in third person, so we never get inside Wayne's head. Added to that are the numerous passages describing the landscape or some history of the town where Wayne lives, and this book lost my attention. I wanted to learn about Wayne, not about Canada.

Superheroes

Wikipedia defines a superhero as “a character possessing ‘extraordinary or superhuman powers’” who uses those powers to fight evil. Some of the more famous superheroes will have a standard set of supervillians they fight; these supervillians may be beaten, only to return later for another attempt at beating the superhero. A superhero story follows a fairly standard plot: the superhero lives incognito, working a regular job, until some big, scary, bad thing happens and the hero is called upon to save the day. The hero and the villain have a battle of epic proportions, usually involving a lot of damage to buildings and city infrastructure, and the villain is ultimately defeated by the hero, who eventually resumes his average appearance and his ordinary job.

Because of this standard plot, superhero comics could almost be considered genre fiction, similar to romances, science fiction, or mysteries. The stock characters are standard, the plot is predictable, but none of those things take away from the comics’ popularity. In fact, some readers may gravitate to comics precisely because they are predictable, the same way some library patrons check out a stack of mysteries every time they come to the library. Those who don’t read genre fiction may find the books to be too similar to one another to be enjoyable, but the huge readership of genre fiction proves that its popularity is far from over. 

The same goes for superhero comics. It is comforting to know that no matter how scary things become in the story, or how strong the villain is, the superhero will come through in the end; good will triumph and evil will be defeated. This may be why some characters – such as Spiderman – have endured for as long as they have.

Marvel has an online “create your own superhero” program that kids would probably love to play with. There are lots of options to choose from as far as what your superhero will look like or what kinds of weapons he/she will have. I played with it for a little bit and was able to create my own superhero. There’s even a print option, so you could print out your superhero and color in his/her picture or imagine adventures that he/she would go on and villains he/she would fight. 

I also discovered a rather unfortunate list of superheroes. It’s supposed to be some sort of catch-all list of all the superheroes and villains in the comic book universe; however, it includes some characters that I wouldn’t consider superheroes or villians, such as the Disney characters Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. Neither of those characters has any superhuman characteristics or fights evil; I’m not sure why they were included on the list.

I also took one of the inevitable “which superhero are you” quizzes and discovered that, for some reason, I am most like Superman. Except without the spandex. Probably many people enjoy imagining themselves as superheroes (or villains), doing great things with super powers. Perhaps that is part of the appeal of superhero comics; for just a few moments, as we read, we can imagine that we are more than the sum of our parts.

The Heavy: A Mother, A Daughter, A Diet -- A Memoir

Weiss, Dara-Lynn. The Heavy: A Mother, A Daughter, A Diet -- A Memoir. Ballantine Books, 2013.

The Heavy is Weiss's retelling of her journey in helping her obese daughter lose weight and change her eating habits. Weiss's family did not have a habit of eating lots of food or eating junk food or sitting around lazily all day. It was a real struggle to adjust her seven-year old's eating so that she could lose weight. Throughout, Weiss encounters unhelpful and judgmental parents, hard to navigate menu options, a school lunch program not designed to help kids lose weight, and a host of doctors who help with varying levels of success.

This was an interesting book and a quick read. I enjoyed learning about Weiss's journey with her daughter, and I appreciated Weiss's approach both to the weight-loss program and also the story she has told of her struggle in finding the balance between giving her daughter what she wants and helping her do what she needs.

I received a complimentary copy of this book through the Goodreads First Reads program for the purposes of review.

Sock it to Me, Santa!

Parker, Madison. Sock it to Me, Santa! Smashwords, 2012.

Ryan, a closeted gay teen, has a homeroom teacher who insists on "team-building" activities to help her students get to know each other better.  For the holidays, she chooses to do a Secret Santa gift exchange where the students must make gifts for each other over the weeks preceding Christmas.  Ryan is devastated to discover that he has selected Jamie - an openly gay, Kurt-esque character - as his recipient.  He despairs of finding appropriate gifts for Jamie.  In the end, Ryan discovers that perhaps he has feelings for Jamie.

This short story reads a lot like an episode of Glee.  If you are willing to suspend your disbelief and expect miracles within a short time span, the story is fun.  Not uber-believable, but fun.