Paper Towns by John Green

reviewed by Gerti

I’ve read several John Green books now, and while “Paper Towns” is not my favorite, it is not his worst either. PT has a typical Green formula - a charming pre-college narrator (Quentin Jacobsen in this case) who travels the country, amidst tortured tales of teen angst and romance. High school senior Q (short for Quentin) is in love with his neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman, who is far more attractive, more interesting, and more everything than Quentin. She is a popular girl with a reputation for fearlessness, and as such, hell breaks loose when she finds out her boyfriend has been cheating on her. Q helps with her multifaceted revenge plan, but when Margo’s breakup precedes her leaving town, “Paper Towns” turns into “Looking for Alaska,” another (better) Green novel in which the female love interest disappears, forcing the protagonist into a road trip of self discovery. In this case, it is also literally a trip from Florida to a “paper town” in New York.

Quentin faces the same issues faced by Alaska’s hero – has the girl he was crushing on killed herself? To find resolution, Q and his friends (fellow seniors Radar and Ben, as well as Ben’s girlfriend Lacey) follow clue after clue in order to track down a mercifully still-living Margo. But there are few happy endings in life, and there is none here in “Paper Towns”, for while the band of friends find Margo in Agloe, New York (a town which doesn’t really exist at all), Margo didn’t want to be found. The “paper town” destination is a metaphor for Q’s relationship with Margo herself. He is in love with his idea of her, and not with the person she really is. In the same way, a paper town exists only on paper, a place invented by map publishers to keep others from stealing their information.

This book, like all of Green’s novels, is populated by fascinating, quirky, sometimes brilliant characters. The situations presented are also relatively unique, but I like this book less than some of Green’s previous efforts, perhaps because Margo is so very unlikeable. Her revenge plan for her cheating boyfriend is over the top, her idea of fun (sneaking into Sea World when it’s closed) is over the top, and her final departure from her previous life, family and friends, is so abrupt and final that she seems seriously damaged, rather than charmingly adventurous. She has deep-seated psychological problems and needs professional help, not just a group of supportive friends. Her pattern of living alone in deserted buildings (one a mini-mall filled with asbestos) is dangerous and for a young, attractive woman, a recipe for disaster.

Green’s books are usually charming, fun and easy-to-read, but this novel leaves me with a sour taste. When Q leaves Margo behind, I root for him to get over her, because I don’t see her story ending in anything besides suicide. I understand Green’s message – that we can never really know other people - but that ground was covered more effectively over a hundred years ago by Nathaniel Hawthorne in “The Minister’s Black Veil.” Avoid making a trip to this “Paper Town.”

Ender's Game

 

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Reviewed by Gerti 

My husband read Orson Scott Card’s classic science fiction novel “Ender’s Game” decades ago, and my son a few years ago before the movie of the same name came out. They were both able to scoff when we watched the movie together about how the story was handled by the filmmakers. And while I don’t always trust their taste in literature since it runs more toward science fiction than mine, they were right when it comes to this book. “Ender’s Game” is amazing.

The storyline is dramatic and suspenseful, with a likeable main character, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, who even though he is not even 10 at the book’s beginning, is nonetheless frightening in his understanding of the world and other people. He is a “Third” child in a world where families are not allowed to have that many children. He has older siblings named Peter and Valentine, and while Peter is a sadist, sister Valentine has always come to Ender’s aid. This is why Ender feels that someone older and wiser will always come to his aid as he goes through his military training, but we learn later that that is not the case.

I don’t want to ruin the plot for you, but let’s just say that Ender kills people. There are two instances where Ender is being bullied by one child in particular, and that child also has a pack of followers. Ender realizes that if he doesn’t decisively win a fight, the bullying will continue and only get worse. So he cleverly defeats his older boy bullies. But what he doesn’t realize until the novel’s end is that he in fact kills those boys, not as Peter would out of cruelty, but out of necessity, as Ender sees it. And while adults are watching, the other boys could just have easily have killed Ender, and no one would have come to his aid.

In incidents like those, Ender proves his strategic intelligence. He is seen as the last hope for humans in a war against alien creatures called “buggers”. He believes he is a student at Battle School, preparing for the coming war against them. He doesn’t realize till the end that each simulation he goes through, he is actually fighting battles against these telepathic creatures. I did, perhaps because I had already seen the movie, but there were enough clues left by the author that Ender has a special connection with the computers at the academy. He was so extraordinary when playing a video game on the school’s machines that his human handlers had not designed the levels on which he was playing.

This book won the Hugo & Nebula awards for writers of science fiction, and the fights between Ender and the other boys, as well as the battle simulations in the special zero gravity rooms, are brilliantly written, so clear and precise in their language that visualizing them was easy even for someone who prefers Regency Romances like myself. My only critique of the book, and apparently it is a common one, is that Ender would be too young to do all this, starting at age 6. I could be wrong, however, as my teenaged son disagrees, and he probably remembers more clearly how young boys think since he’s closer to that age.

Just As Long As We're Together

Gerti's Review of Judy Blume’s “Just As Long As We’re Together”

Judy Blume is an author that I found irresistible when I was a teenager, many, many years ago! I recently picked up one of her books at a library book sale, and realized that she kept writing even after I went to college! Her books are still designed to appeal to her traditional target audience – tweens and teens.

In this book, “Just As Long As We’re Together,” a young girl named Stephanie is getting ready to go back to school. Her best friend since second grade, Rachel, is scared about the new school year, but excited, too. Then a new girl named Alison shows up in their neighborhood, and the longtime best friends begin to drift apart. Add to that social complication the fact that Stephanie’s parents are separating, which they of course hide from her, and you’ve got a story of typically modern teenaged angst. Stephanie hates her dad’s new girlfriend, and works hard to break them up and re-introduce her mom into the love equation. Rachel has a hard time accepting Alison as Stephanie’s new friend, and the two girls have a huge fight that their parents try to mitigate. And of course, all three girls are starting to notice boys, which leads to its own problems! Oh, the drama!

More “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret” than “Forever”, “Just As Long As We’re Together” is a book for young teens who may be going through the same sort of social upheavals. The lessons are softballs - it’s hard to insert new friends into old alliances, and it’s even harder to figure out the opposite sex! While I like the book’s well-defined main character, Stephanie, her friends seem like caricatures. Rachel is the prototypical “smart girl,” and Alison, the foreign, worldly one. Her mom is a famous actress, and as a result Alison has travelled the world and was even born abroad, which is pretty sophisticated for her group of friends.

Each girl has to solve her own crisis, but in Judy Blume world, it all turns out all right. JALAWT has little content that could be objectionable to parents. And while it still amazes me that middle-aged Judy Blume still knows about the silly things that worry teenagers, I guess that’s the nature of her creativity. It was amusing, as a parent, to spy on the pubescent conversations she presents here, and perhaps more than when I was young, this text shows me exactly how talented a writer Blume is. This book won’t change anybody’s life, but it is an entertaining and well-written effort by one of America’s favorite writers of teen fiction.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Children's Fiction
Reviewed by Alicia

When my mom suggested reading the Harry Potter books, I didn't want to. I thought they'd be boring. My mom wanted to read just a few chapters together to see what I'd think, though. I decided that I could put up with it.

Mom read the first chapter and asked if she should return the book to the library the next day. "NO!" I shouted. I was hooked. We couldn't read through the book fast enough. Even my little sister was interested. We're about 100 pages into the 2nd book and I can't wait to find out what happens!

I Hunt Killers

I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga
Teen Fiction

Meet Jasper "Jazz" Dent. His claim to fame in his hometown of Lobo's Nod is being the son of serial killer Billy Dent. Billy is safely in prison, but a string of recent murders is casting doubt on Jazz. Could the son be following in the father's footsteps? Join Jazz as he starts his own investigation, hoping to clear his name and answer some of the questions in his own mind.

And then read Game and Blood of my Blood to see the series through to its surprising conclusion!