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Bainbridge, David. Teenagers: a Natural History. Vancouver: Greystone, 2009. Print.

I heard about this book through “Professionally Speaking”, the monthly publication of the Ontario College of Teachers, of which I am a member.  Since I have a teenager in the house, it seemed like a suitable book to read, and in fact he ended up reading it too.

Two things set this book apart; instead of focusing on brain development, puberty, behaviour, or evolution, it integrated research from all those areas to present a high-level, connected view of everything that happens between the ages of 13 and 19.  It was also remarkable in the positive and even joyful portrayal it gave of the teenage years.  It was refreshing for me to read, and also wonderful for my son, who gets a lot of jokes and ribbing about being a teen.  The chapter on drugs was sobering, showing how even occasional drug use can interfere with the chemical workings of the brain and cause permanent damage.  However, it was an even-handed discussion focusing on medical research, rather than a scare-mongering approach that would just make my teen roll his eyes.  Similarly but with an opposite flavour, the chapter on teenage sex showed that teenage sex is not necessarily permanently damaging, and is in fact a safer area for teens to take the risks that they inherently take.

This is an excellent book that I highly recommend, I will be certainly reading it again in the next few years as the teenage behaviour in my house gets more challenging.

Better Homes & Gardens. Small Kitchen Solutions. John Wiley & Sons Canada, Limited, 2010. Print.

This glossy book was full of beautiful kitchens, most of which I would not call ‘small’.  There was one truly small kitchen, which at 8′ by 9′ was a similar size to mine.  They made some odd choices in that kitchen, including fridge drawers and a countertop cabinet that took up a third of the limited counter space.

Kitchens 11′ by 13′ or 14′ by 13′ were more typical, and many had separate pantries.  So, none of the kitchens had any useful ideas about layout for me, as I’m trying to plan a 9′ by 9′ and a 6′ by 7′ kitchen in our new downsized life.  One of their kitchens is 17′ by 19′ – I can’t see how that is “small” by anyone’s standards!

The pictures are still nice, especially the red and white Art Deco kitchen.  But I would say it’s no better than any other kitchen idea book.  The final “workbook” chapter is short, superficial, and unnecessary, but every kitchen book seems to feel the need to include such a chapter these days.

Not recommended.

Rao, Anthony, and Michelle D. Seaton. The Way of Boys: Raising Healthy Boys in a Challenging and Complex World. New York: William Morrow, 2009. Print.

In this non-fiction book, Rao seeks to explain the roots of why boys behave they do, and convince people that what people think of as “good” behaviour is unusual in boys, but not pathological.  He is concerned about the rise of diagnosis of ADHD and learning disabilities, and the labeling of many boys as having “problems” that end up being “corrected” with medication, classroom withdrawal, or severe behaviour modification training.

This resonated with me, having raised one particularly “active” boy to the current age of thirteen, and also having a foster child in our care who is a rambunctious eleven-year-old boy.  (It’s no coincidence that I started reading parenting books again as we started fostering!).  Although Rao doesn’t address the issue of kids in care directly, it’s all too easy to see how a child could be labeled as developmentally delayed, when they are just reacting to the stress of their situation.  It’s great that extra supports and testing are available for these kids, but it’s also great for me to have Rao’s methods in my toolbox.

The only drawback for me is that this book is mostly talking about kids that are younger than mine; although later in the book it got more useful.

Highly recommended, especially for parents of boys in the 2-10 age range.

Bentley, Eilean. Massage: a Gaia Busy Person’s Guide to Massage : Soothe Away the Tensions and Anxieties of a Busy Lifestyle. Toronto: McArthur &, 2004. Print.

I think this is the first book I’m going to declare it not worth reading.  I put it on hold at the library because it was the first result that came back when I searched on the word “massage”.  All I was looking for were some simple instructions for my husband to massage some of the tense muscles in my shoulders and neck; what I got instead were instructions on using crystals to relieve my tension!

It went back to the library almost immediately, and I haven’t had the heart to try another yet.

Moritsugu, Kim. The Restoration of Emily: a Novel. Toronto, Ont.: Simon & Pierre, 2006. Print.

My husband picked this up for me, when asked to get me “something for the cottage” on a day he was going to the library and I couldn’t get there.  This turned out to be perfect.  When he read the back, saying that it was about a woman with a teenage son who restores old houses, he knew I’d have something in common with the main character.  I did like her, and sympathized with her struggles in her personal and professional life.  I read it fairly quickly, mostly in a deck chair on the dock at a beloved aunt and uncle’s cottage, with occasional cups of tea and glasses of wine to go with it.  In that kind of situation, I recommend this book.

Grisham, John. Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer. New York: Dutton Children’s, 2010. Print.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually read a Grisham novel before, but I guess I don’t have to apologize for that.  This one caught my eye simply because I didn’t know he’d written any YA books, and I guess this is his first.  Like the recent Nickerson book, I started it at bedtime and ended up finishing the same night.  I found it quite enjoyable and reasonably realistic – Grisham resists the temptation to have his kid hero be in dire peril and solve a mystery that the adults around him can’t.  It was perhaps a bit pedantic here and there, but it didn’t detract from the story; and as a pedant myself, I appreciated the way he has the family watching Perry Mason, with the mother irritatedly saying “It doesn’t happen that way in real life!”.

Another good side of this is that LibraryThing recommends 10 other books by authors I’ve mostly never heard of, so there’s a whole genre out there I’ve been missing so far and can catch up on!

Nickerson, Sara, and Sally Wern Comport. How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. Print.

This was a rare case of me giving a book to a kid to read without reading it myself, and it totally backfired.  Said child got up to about page 60, but then never got any further.  I started it myself the other night at bedtime to see what it was like, and I loved it – I read the whole thing that night, staying up far too late!

The main character is a middle-school-aged girl who has problems at home – her father is dead and her mother sound clinically depressed to me, from the description.  It turns out that the mother owns a creepy old house, and the mystery of how it came to be hers is what kicks off the action of the book.  Nickerson has written a book that kept fooling me into thinking it was going to play into a predictable type, but never did – weaving elements of mystery, horror, graphic novels and fantasy together (without ever asking for a suspension of disbelief) and bringing it all to a satisfying conclusion.  Scholastic ranks this at a Grade 6 level, and I think that’s appropriate, although it was clearly beyond my Grade 6 tester.

The best analogy I can come up with is to E. L. Konigsberg, although LibraryThing suggests Gordon Korman and Jerry Spinelli as recommendations.

Sfar, Joann, and Audré Jardel. Vampire Loves. New York: First Second, 2006. Print.

In the summer I’m responsible for providing appropriate reading material for the kids at home to augment their own choices for pleasure reading.  I aim for three books a week – a fiction, a non-fiction, and a graphic novel. This was my pick for a 13-year-old boy who had read the Little Vampire books when he was younger. I end up reading most of the books I pick myself, and I found myself unimpressed with this one as I was reading it.  It has stuck with me, though, and I find myself thinking about it.

The drawings seem less accomplished than I remember from Little Vampire, although it has been quite a while since I’ve looked at them. The main character reminds me of a teenage boy, drifting from girl to girl and not quite sure what he’s doing, but never quite satisfied either.

I’m not sure whether to recommend this, but I’ll definitely continue to check out Sfar’s work, especially The Rabbi’s Cat, which seems to be popular and well-regarded.

Boniface, William, and Stephen Gilpin. The Hero Revealed: the Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. Print.

Both of my boys read and enjoyed this book, and I quite liked it too. In Superopolis everyone has a unique superpower, except the main character. It’s a premise that any super-hero-obsessed 11-year-old boy would be willing to give a chance, and Ordinary Boy is such a likable character, and the book so action-packed, that they are not disappointed.

OB, as he is known for short, and his friends in his team, the “Junior Leaguers” help their parents to defeat Superopolis’s biggest villain, Professor Brain-Drain. The book does fall a bit into that annoying kid’s book trap of having kids present and helping at events that in real life would be too scary for them, but hey, we obviously suspended a lot of belief at the whole superpower notion, right?

Highly recommended, especially for boys around Grade 4 or 5 who are into Spiderman and dream of having their own powers.

Adamson, Gil. The Outlander: a Novel. New York: Ecco, 2008. Print.

I have the feeling this book was recommended to me my LibraryThing, not because of books I’ve read, but books that are on my “to read someday” list. However, it popped up on my library hold list and I figured it was about what I was looking for.

It was indeed… a historical setting, a sympathetic main character, exciting adventures, and memorable supporting characters. I have been struggling lately knowing how much to say in these “reviews”, since the point is to keep track of what I might want to be searching for later, but I don’t want to include spoilers.

So, I’ll try to describe a bit here, without giving anything away.  Mary is a young widow, just 19, whose only child died within a few days of being born. She suffers from mental illness (schizophrenia, I guess, considering that she sees visions and hears voices?) and murders her husband. At the beginning of the book she is running away, pursued by her brothers-in-law, two very similar looking large, red-headed men. William Moreland is a loner she runs across and spends time with in the wilderness of 1903 Western Canada. There’s a mining town and a dwarf, and I suppose you could label this a “Western”, but trying to pigeonhole it in that way would be a shame.