How do you spell embarrassed? D-A-D

It's tough enough being thirteen and having divorced parents. But when you find out you're going to go live with your dad (okay) in Chicago (still okay) for a few months (less okay) and he's now impersonating Elvis (way NOT okay), life gets a little crazy. That's just what happens to Josh in this hilarious Rebecca Caudill nominee All Shook Up by Shelley Pearsall. Josh thinks he can make it through a few months of seventh grade in a new location, as long as nobody finds out about his dad, but then learns - oh, no!! - his dad has been invited to perform at his school. Josh comes up with a plan to prevent the performance, but the situation progresses from bad to worse. With help from Ivory, a free-spirited classmate; Viv, Ivory's mom (and girlfriend of Josh's dad); and Gladys, an elderly neighbor who thinks Josh's dad really IS Elvis, Josh learns how to accept the hunk-a, hunk-a burning embarrassment who's trying his best to be a good father.

Sisters...sisters...

Okay, so you might not know the song that begins with those words, but it's a perfect way to describe Peace, Love & Baby Ducks by Lauren Myracle. It's the beginning of the school year, and older sister Carly is a high school sophomore. Her younger sister Anna is now a freshman, and Carly thinks it's going to be great seeing Anna at her school. Only...it's not. Anna's really sweet, but over the past summer, she started getting super curvy. Guys are drooling over her, and the relationship between the sisters begins to change. Add to the mix their lives in an affluent neighborhood and exclusive high school, Carly's crush on the wrong boy when the right one is right under her nose, and a shifting landscape of friendships, and you get an authentic, funny, and touching look at sisterhood.

Delightful spring reading

I didn't intentionally read this at the beginning of spring, when I was thinking about my garden, but the timing couldn't have been better. Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman is about the transformation of an ugly lot in inner-city Cleveland to a beautiful, productive vegetable garden. Each chapter is told in a different voice - young, old, Korean, Hispanic, upbeat, sad. As the garden prospers, the gardeners get to know and trust one another, and they are transformed as well. The imagery is incredible, and the length of the book (69 pages) makes it approachable to many. A great multi-cultural selection.

Off and running with Rebecca Caudill

Every year I try to read all of the books nominated for the Rebecca Caudill Young Reader's Book Award, and every year...I'm in a hurry at the end. So I'm starting now with the 2011 nominees. Wish me luck!

In Schooled by Gordon Korman, Capricorn (Cap) Anderson lives with and is homeschooled by his hippie grandmother on a commune; he's never had pizza, never watched TV... you get the idea. After she's injured and has to stay in the hospital for a while, Cap is sent to live with a counselor and her obnoxious teen daughter, while he attends Claverage Middle School (aka C Average). His long bushy hair, tie-dyed clothes, and overwhelming cluelessness about how his classmates live earn him the "honor" of biggest nerd and, according to tradition, the presidency of the 8th grade class. Each chapter is told in a different voice: Cap, the counselor or her daughter, Zach (big man on campus), Hugh (the previous biggest nerd), and others. This is one of those books for which I have mixed feelings. The story moves well, some parts are funny or touching, and Cap's view of life was pretty interesting, but the voices of the 8th graders didn't seem authentic to me, and I had a hard time getting past that. I'd love to know what middle schoolers think of this book!

It's a bird...it's a plane...it's a whale?

This was a new genre for me: steampunk. It's like science fiction, but it's set in the past. In Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld (yes, the author of the Uglies series), the story takes place during the time of World War I. Prince Alek's own people of the Austro-Hungarian Empire have turned on him, and he's on the run in a Stormwalker - an amazing mechanical contraption made by the Clankers. Deryn has disguised herself as a boy so that she can enter the British Air Service. She ends up on the Leviathan, a wildly imaginative (and living!) airship creation of the Darwinists. War is threatening, and when Alek and Deryn's paths cross, they're in for quite an adventure. Westerfeld does a great job making the inventions and "fabricated beasties" both fascinating and plausible for the time frame of the book, and Keith Thompson's detailed illustrations helped me picture the excitement. About the only thing I didn't like was the book's ending...it needs to be completed with a sequel.