by James Patterson

Imagine a teenager. Not just any teenager--a really annoying teenager with an attitude. Okay, any teenager. You know what? Better yet, picture yourself as a teenager. (This is easy for me to do). You're annoying. You're probably at about a 7.5 out of 10 annoyingness level, right? So much attitude that you're annoying yourself, right?
Good. Now multiply that number by one thousand six hundred and thirty two point five.
That is Maximum Ride.
A book about possibly the most rebellious teenager in existence (Max), and rife with a bunch of                  
                                                                others contending for the crown.
It's kind of fun to read, actually.

The adventurous, if not too original, plotline, features aforementioned teenager Max and her family, the Flock. Why the avian imagery? Well, the members of this particular family are 2% bird. Born in test tubes of recombinant DNA and raised (held captive) their whole lives by (who else?) mad/evil scientists, our heroes escaped their captors and (here's where the book starts) spend the rest of their lives running (ahem, flying) away to avoid recapture. Pretty crazy existence, right? And yet I suspect that most of us would put up with it if we had wings thrown into the deal.

So Max leads her jolly little band all over the world, and eventually the Internet, in this captivating (you see what I did there?) series.
Yes. All very awesome. And I enjoyed it very much, I daresay I can still enjoy it very much, yet after reading the third or fourth book I realized the following things:

1) It never ends. The story goes around and around and around so much that I lost track of how much tail-kicking of Erasers (the mad scientists' werewolf thugs) actually goes on. It's a lot.

2) It isn't a book. 
I don't recall when I realized this, but when I did there was no going back. James Patterson doesn't write books. He writes action movies. You know those ones where the taking names never ends, and the sound bites that are thrown in between the action sequences are either banter or explosions? This is not a book series. It's a movie script writhing in its paper prison.

3) It's inconsistent. Wait...where did Fang get that laptop? Do we ever actually establish whether Jeb's a good guy, a traitor, a good guy pretending to be a traitor, or a bad guy pretending to be a traitor pretending to be a double agent? How does all this tie in? That sort of thing. Does Patterson even remember what he wrote in the last book?!

4) After the third book it just drags on...and on...saying the same things over and over. What is the Flock trying to accomplish, again? And the action gets less believable.

So. Good book series, but not amazing. Read the first three books if you like teenage sarcasm and action movies and want to fantasize about flying.

for: teenagers. Don't give it to your 10-12 year-olds. It will accelerate the annoyification process.
Content rating: 4/5 Definitely some swearing in there, especially as the series progresses. The teen angst gets more annoying too.
My enjoyment: starting out...probably 4/5

by Neil Gaiman

I do like this book. Neil Gaiman calls it "refreshingly creepy" and "a story that children experienced as an adventure, but which gave adults nightmares." I don't know about the nightmares, but it's certainly creepy and I wouldn't let small children read it...
Coraline is about a girl named Coraline who lives with her loving but disinterested parents in a large house divided into several flats. The neighbors are either fairly odd or certifiably insane, depending on your point of view. 
Coraline is an explorer. But one day, she comes across the dilemma that all explorers encounter: it's raining and she's not allowed out. After Coraline counts all the windows in the flat, visits the crazy neighbors, lists everything blue, and is STILL about to die of boredom, she remembers the door in the drawing room that is said to lead nowhere...
(But come on, I mean, we've all read Narnia.)
Behind the door is a world where everything is better, or at least more interesting. And behind the door is another mother who wants to keep Coraline forever.

One of the things I like most about this book is Coraline herself. She's just a great character. As for the rest, it's certainly imaginative. An adventure. I think it's meant to be a sort of horror fairy tale.
Don't ask me if the movie is better. I haven't seen it. 

       But hey, nice movie poster!
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For: older kids 
Content rating: 4/5 This is sort of hard to say. It isn't that there's bad stuff so much as it...it just isn't entirely benign. The evil is a little too accurate for a childrens' story. Of course, that's my take and I rarely read spooky stories.
My enjoyment: 3.5/5

by Markus Zusak

One of the most beautiful, grim, intriguing, lovable books that I have ever read.
And that, as many of you know, is saying a lot.
Yeah, this book pretty much rocks. It's told in an...original way. And the narrator is now one of my all-time favorite book characters.
The Book Thief takes place (refreshingly, I thought) in Nazi Germany. I've heard a lot of the Allies' side of WWII. I enjoy historical fiction and found it interesting to learn about the life of ordinary German people at this point in history. 

As the story opens, nine-year-old Liesel Meminger is traveling by train with her mother and little brother to Munich, where the siblings will live with a foster family. Liesel's brother never makes it. When the mother and daughter arrives in Munich several days later, Werner is dead from illness and buried in a nameless town's cemetery and Liesel carries a stolen book in her snow-bitten hands.
That book is the first of several, and it is through the books that Liesel's story is told.
Still reeling from grief and plagued by nightmares, Liesel settles into life in her new home on Himmel Street in the poor part of town. Life with the Hubermanns has few luxuries, but she comes to love her kind foster father and even her hard-edged new mother. She befriends the irrepressible Rudy Steiner (who is widely acknowledged by all to be insane), learns to devour books with a passion, and dutifully attends all her Hitler Youth meetings. However, war and Nazi ideals overshadow the lives of all German citizens, and Liesel's happy enough lifestyle is threatened when a promise made years ago brings a Jewish refugee to hide in her home.

One of my favorite things about this book is the excellent job Zuzak does developing the characters into real people with faults, virtues, dreams, and adventures. It's a great, complex plotline and a realistic historical setting where childish escapades can mean playing with life and death.

for: Adults and teens
Content rating: 3/5  There's plenty of death, violence, swearing, and crime. I'll add that I am now more familiar with German profanity than I ever thought I'd be.
My enjoyment: 5/5

Read. It.

by Madeleine L'Engle

Austins, reader. Reader, Austins. Now that we've made the introductions...
This is a good book. This is a sort of life-is-being-lived book. You can't really say that nothing much happens, when in fact a child's life is altered, a potential girlfriend is chased away, and a dog becomes a hero. Let's face it, these things happen in every book. There is a difference though. In this book, shockingly, no one saves the world, however, they do have a few jolly good family sing-alongs.

I like these books. Once in a while, it's nice to read something where the world doesn't get saved, nor in fact does it need saving, at least not in the immediate future. Still, if I had to choose, the dualistic Wrinkle in Time series is a lot better than the Austins series. Both series, however, showcase L'Engle's excellent, friendly characters. Normal people, and what is more, decent people. I like that, because they are easy to empathize with. 
Anyhow, the story is about Vicky Austin and her family. One day they receive the terrible news that their Uncle Hal and his copilot were killed when their experimental aircraft exploded. The copilot's now-orphaned daughter Maggy is sent to live with the Austins while her upper-class grandfather comes to a decision on her future. 12-year-old Vicky tells the story of her family and how Maggy comes to fit in with them despite problems encountered upon the way.
Sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic, always honest. 
A good book. Not a spectacular one. For that, read A Wrinkle In Time.

for: older children on up
Content rating: 5/5
My enjoyment: 3/5

by Pam Munoz Ryan

This is a good book. It's one of those childrens-books-that-adults-can-enjoy-too. A very admirable kind of book. In fact, my only problem with this book is the problem that I have with nearly all award-winning children's books, or at least the ones with female protagonists.

The Lists.

Why the lists? 
Why does every children's author seem to think that every "strong, female protagonist" must carry with her a notebook full of, nothing useful like short stories or doodles, but lists? 
I suppose it is to make them more endearing. I suppose that audiences like to think of quiet little girls as sweet and sensitive and organized. Because heaven forbid anyone go on a life-changing journey to learn about themselves (always what the little girl learns) without a notebook.
Still it boggles my mind.
I can understand a sketchbook, or a notebook full of witty retorts, but this..this penchant for unimaginative rows of words...I just...
ANYWAY, BACK TO THE BOOK REVIEW.

So, I was saying, this is a good book. About a sweet, sensitive, quiet, organized little girl named Naomi Soledad Leon Outlaw who lives happily in a trailer park with her little brother Owen and their Gram, who is actually their great-grandmother. 
They get along just great until one day the children's mother shows up out of the blue and disrupts everything. In, as Naomi would probably say, a sweet-and-sour kind of way. 
Skyla comes bearing gifts, history, and an unfortunate taste in boyfriends. She carries on over Naomi, but largely ignores Owen because he is partially crippled from birth. Neither child, however, trusts Skyla for long.
Is Skyla a loving mother? Probably. An unstable mother? Yes. A responsible mother? Doubtful.
But since Skyla still has full parental rights and shows every indication of wanting Naomi back, Gram flees with the children to Mexico on a "Christmas vacation" to find their father. There, Naomi enters a holiday festival and puts her talent for soap carving to the test. She discovers her Mexican heritage, a part of herself that she barely knew was there, and that might hold the key to unlocking her real voice--the voice of un leon.

Okay, there is one other teeny little thing that bugs me. Can I mention this real quick? What's with the...the Handy-Manny and Dora-the-Explorer-esque way of communicating? "Como esta, how are you?" "Buenas noches, good night!" "It will be maravilloso, wonderful!"
Please. I think we can all figure out that maravilloso means something along the lines of marvelous. Don't translate everything.
Anyway, that's...that's all I had to say. Yeah. Happy reading.

for: anyone
Content rating: 5/5
My enjoyment: 4/5