What would you do if your doppleganger suddenly walked up to you and offered to show you the parallel universes that existed right outside the thin fabric of your reality? One day when Ohio teenager John Rayburn heads to the barn to do chores, he is confronted by an identical man who claims he is actually JR himself, but from a parallel world. He calls himself John Prime, and offers JR a deal—a 24-hour vacation in a parallel universe, free of charge. What red-blooded adolescent wouldn’t take such a proposition? To travel to another time and place while your twin guards your life here? Except, that’s not exactly what happens. Turns out Prime’s device only works one way, and that’s forward. Once JR jumps ahead to another universe, he can no longer go back. And now Prime is living his stolen life and JR has no choice but to find a new place in the universe. At first JR stumbles around multiple universes (universi?), making newbie-universe-traveler mistakes like losing his money, accidentally bringing alien species into other universes, and referring to objects or technology that haven’t been invented yet in the universe he is currently visiting. But finally JR settles down in a universe not unlike his own and decides to study physics in order to learn how the device works—so he can throw the lever in reverse, kick Prime’s butt and take his life back. But first he’s going to finance his college education by inventing a little game called pinball…This mind-bending and thoroughly entertaining sci-fi will leave you pondering the possibilities of parallel worlds and appreciating the little things like reality TV, root beer and Rubik’s Cubes that make THIS universe so frickin’ awesome.
Category: Boy Meets Book
Books from the male perspective for everyone.
Reality Check by Peter Abrahams
Seventeen-year-old football quarterback Cody Laredo never considered himself a good student. He maintained grades just high enough to keep his butt off the bench, hoping that a college football scholarship would be his ticket to the NFL. But now that he’s blown out his knee, lost his gorgeous upper-crust girlfriend Clea to boarding school and missed so many classes that he has no idea what is going on, he’s decided to drop out. Which is why he’s free to skip town and head east when he hears on the local news that Clea’s gone missing. When her beloved horse Bud comes back rider-less, the local authorities assume Clea was thrown in the woods and a search party is quickly assembled. Cody quietly joins their ranks, initially concealing his identity from the townies. But when Clea isn’t found in a few days, the search is called off and Cody begins to conduct his own investigation, based on little more than commonsense and intuition. As he begins to collect clues about Clea’s disappearance, Cody struggles with who to suspect and who to trust. Among the possible perpetrators are: Ike, the crabby old stable hand at Clea’s fancy school who seems to know more than he’s letting on; Sergeant Orton, the local fuzz who appears to be playing Cody just as much as Cody is playing him; and finally Townes, the rich boy who stole Clea’s heart—and maybe more. One of these men know what happened to his best girl. And it’s up to Cody to find out who before it’s too late. Reality Check is a solid, satisfying mystery with an earnest, blue-collar teen sleuth at it’s center. I love how Cody, who readily admits he’s not the biggest intellectual in the world, operates from the heart and realistically struggles with putting the pieces of the puzzle together, instead of snapping his fingers and solving it all in one fell swoop. This is the first book I’ve read by mystery author Peter Abrahams, but you can bet it won’t be the last!
Dog On It by Spencer Quinn
Meet Bernie and Chet, the two hard-bitten P.I.’s of the Little Detective Agency. Though one has two legs and the other four, both are tough, not easily fooled dudes with hearts of gold. Bernie Little is a down-on-his-luck detective with a big debt and small checking account. Chet “the Jet†is his loyal-to-the-bone mongrel sidekick whose wandering nose and lack of impulse control often gets him into trouble. Chet is the star of this mystery-series opener, as he narrates Bernie’s life in an uber-realistic, easily distracted canine voice that often comes across as barkingly funny. In their first adventure together, Bernie and Chet are hired to find wealthy teen Madison Chambliss, whose divorced mother reports her missing. But there’s more to this apparent runaway case that meets the eye (or nose, in Chet’s case), and the dedicated partners soon dig up connections between Madison’s disappearance, a real estate development that’s gone bottoms up, and the Russian mafia. To make matters more complicated, both have recently become smitten: Bernie with local investigative reporter Suzie Sanchez and Chet with a mysterious furry female he only knows by her come-hither bark. Unlike some other best-selling doggerel, this book nails the dog’s-eye point of view perfectly and also serves as an excellent introduction to the detective genre if you haven’t had the pleasure of dipping into it before. A doggone good book that even a cat person can love. I can’t wait to go on a stake-out with Chet and Bernie again!
Destroy All Cars by Blake Nelson
Seventeen-year-old James Hoff is the world’s biggest pessimist. He doesn’t believe that all this “green†action is really going to do any good, that humans “have ravaged the planet with our insane lust and greed, everywhere leaving behind horrendous pollution, toxic waste, and lethal contamination†and we are all destined to die slow, agonizing deaths from SUV carbon monoxide poisoning. So what’s a cynical guy like him doing with an idealistic optimist like Sadie Kinnell? NOTHING, because philosophical and political differences finally led to their break-up at the end of sophomore year. But no matter how hard he tries to convince himself otherwise through the writing of heated English assignment manifestos that his teacher Mr. Cogweiller has no idea what to do with, James is still in love with Sadie. And as he grapples with what to do about the Sadie situation, how to call off his eighth grade sister’s horny best friend and whether or not he should accept his corporate dad’s offer of an evil, pollution-spewing car (“I just don’t want one. I don’t want to put gas in it, I don’t want to insure it, I don’t want to park it, I don’t want to look at it. If I am the first teenager in the world to refuse a car, so be it.â€), a funny thing happens. James grows a conscience and suddenly Sadie’s point of view starts making a lot more sense. But is it too late for this gloomy Gus to turn over a new (green) leaf? Part angsty “dude” lit. and part angry meditation on the sad state of the environment, Destroy All Cars is one teen’s timely, comic take on love, life and ecology. Blake Nelson is one of my fav authors because he writes some of the smartest and most realistic guy characters in YA lit. Plus his dry, deadpan delivery never gets old and often leaves me smirking at statements like this one from James: “Because I have cut holes in my sweater and have been seen reading books in the cafeteria, I have declared myself to be some sort of fringe, radical, intellectual type. Now I must face the consequences.” Ha! A great companion read to this book.
Punkzilla by Adam Rapp
Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
Marcelo isn’t your typical seventeen-year-old boy. He refers to himself in the third person, is often confused by verbal metaphors, and isn’t crazy about meeting new people. He has “special interests†in religion, classical music, Halflinger ponies and little else. That’s because Marcelo has an Asperger’s-like condition that limits the natural development of his social skills and causes him to be obsessively interested in only a handful of specific topics. Now his father, a high-powered attorney, wants him to take a summer job at his law firm in the mail room so he can learn how the “real world†works. Reluctantly, Marcelo agrees. But from the moment he sets foot in the firm, he is confronted by people and situations that defy the logical way he has always approached life. First there’s Jasmine, the smart and funny head of the mail room whose natural beauty causes Marcelo to feel butterflies in his stomach for the very first time. Then there’s Wendell, the boss’s son whose slick charm keeps Marcelo constantly guessing at his motives. And finally, there’s the picture of the injured girl Marcelo finds at the bottom of an office trash can. Who is she? And was she hurt by the company that Marcelo’s father is defending? By the end of the summer, Marcelo finds himself made much wiser and sadder in the ways of the real world. But also much more hopeful about his survival in it. While this fresh and unaffected novel will be compared to the ground-breaking Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, it deserves a pedestal all its own for Marcelo’s singular voice and the artfully constructed moral mystery that awakens his awareness of good and evil. The Candide-like Marcelo will leave you viewing your own real world in a whole new light.
Going Bovine by Libba Bray
King of the Screwups by K.L.Going
There’s only one thing high school senior Liam Geller is good at—screwing up. No matter what he does or says, he just can’t seem to please his uber-strict dad, a controlling CEO who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Unfortunately, metrosexual Liam is his former runway model mother’s son—popular, gorgeous and impulsive, all qualities that his father despises. So when Liam finally screws up one time too many (getting caught drunk on his dad’s desk with a nearly naked girl), he is sent to stay with his gay, glam-rocking, trailer-park-living “Aunt” Pete in upstate New York. Aunt Pete is about as thrilled about the situation as Liam is, and the two strike an uneasy truce: Liam will ignore Aunt Pete’s large collection of animal-print and neon colored spandex pants if Aunt Pete will carve out a corner of the trailer as a make-shift closet for Liam’s select number of carefully chosen designer duds. In an effort to embrace trailer living and get back into his dad’s good graces, Liam resolves to squash all the aspects of his personality that his dad hates and become the biggest nerd the world has ever seen. There’s just one problem—his impeccably good taste and inherently good looks keep getting in the way. Even as a dork, Liam is a complete and utter failure. Will Aunt Pete ever be able to convince Liam that what his dad views as weaknesses are actually strengths? Or will Liam continue to hide his light under the bushel of his dad’s sky-high expectations and unrealistic demands? Liam struggles to see what the reader and Aunt Pete understand right away–he is massively talented, but what he and his father view as “talent” are two totally different things. Not just another “my parents are ruining my life” re-tread, this very funny fish-out-of-water tale is also about discovering what you’re good at and staying true to your personal vision, no matter how outrageous it may seem to others.
Starclimber by Kenneth Oppel
In the latest episode of Kenneth Oppel’s Victorian steampunk fantasy, young pilot-in-training Matt Cruse and scientific wunderkind Kate DeVries go back up, up, up into the wild blue yonder, only this time they continue on—into the black maw of space. Since their last adventure in mid-air, Matt has been attending the Airship Academy to get his pilot’s license, while Kate has been busy presenting and promoting her zoological discoveries: the cloud cat and the electrifying aerozoanian. But when they are offered the chance to be members of the crew of the Starclimber, the very first vessel to go into outer space, they drop everything to be a part of the historic event. The project is plagued with problems from the beginning, including terrorist attacks by the Babelites, an underground group that believes Man shouldn’t tread on God’s doorstep, mechanical failure on an astronomical scale once they are aloft, and bizarre alien lifeforms that threaten to destroy their fragile ship. Still, cool-headed Matt has proven he can handle any situation, as long as he is confident of Kate’s love. But when Kate announces that she is to be married to another as soon as they land, Matt is plunged into a depression deeper than the blackest Black Hole. Can Matt and Kate put aside their romantic tensions to save the Starclimber and their fellow space travelers? Or will the ship fall from the sky on her maiden voyage like an astral Titanic, dashing her crews’ hopes and lives and the young lovers’ broken hearts onto the unforgiving ground? Oppel’s ability to write perfectly paced, page-turning prose has not lessened in this third volume of Matt and Kate’s sky-high adventures. I always know I’m in for a treat when I crack open one of Oppel’s books, and so far have never been disappointed. The pseudo-science in this one is especially fun, as Matt and Co. use actual principles of physics and biology to get themselves out of various stellar scrapes. While you can read this astral adventure/romance on it’s own, you’ll probably want to go back and hitch a ride with M &K in Airborn and Skybreaker.
Heroes of the Valley by Jonathan Stroud
Short and bowlegged with a snub nose, protruding chin and unfortunate tendency towards bad practical jokes, fourteen-year-old Halli Sveinsson is nobody’s idea of a hero. He loves to listen to the ancient tales of all-mighty Svein, the fearless founder of his House who never hesitated to settle a quarrel with cold steel and made the Valley safe by defeating and banishing the man-eating Trows to the windy moors. But that was long ago. Now the different Houses in the Valley settle disagreements by wielding lawsuits, not swords, and peace is maintained at any cost. As the second son of the House of Svein, Halli has little to do but twiddle his stubby thumbs and dream of adventure—until the arrogant Hakonsson family comes to call. Expecting hospitality from the House of Svein, the Hakonssons get food poisoning instead when fun-loving Halli dumps some dung into their ale. Incensed at having been made fools of, the Hakonssons retaliate with murder, an act that sends Halli on an odyssey of revenge. But unlike the warrior heroes of his favorite stories, Halli barely knows which end of a weapon is up and is soon in way over his head trying to bring honor back to his House. By relying on his wits and some unexpected help from the clever Lady Aud, Halli discovers that heroes are made, not born, and just because he doesn’t look the part doesn’t mean he isn’t fit to hold the sword. This is just a rousing, good old-fashioned Norse-flavored adventure tale, complete with an unlikely hero, a blood thirsty villain, a few terrifying monsters and an impossible quest. Author Jonathan Stroud, the hilarious voice of the canny Bartimaeus, inserts loads of his trademark humor here, even as he imparts a serious message about not putting too much stock in hero stories when our own adventures can be just as exciting. I quite enjoyed passing through Stroud’s Valley, and I think you will too!
Chaos Walking, Book One: The Knife of Never Letting God by Patrick Ness
On Todd’s planet, there is Noise, and nothing but Noise. Infected by the Noise germ since birth, he and all the other males around him are subjected to the unending bedlam of each other’s thoughts. The same virus that caused this mental chaos proved fatal to women, leaving Todd without a mother in a violent village of men, some teetering on the brink of insanity due to the constant Noise. As Todd nears his thirteenth birthday and the secret ceremony that will usher him into their mysterious adult world, he comes across a pocket of blessed silence in the swamps near his home. Astonished, he tries to uncover the meaning of this unnatural quiet. But as Todd delves deeper into the silence, he realizes that its presence heralds a terrible danger to himself and everyone he holds dear. So he embarks on an arduous quest to find the source of the silence, constantly hounded by enemies that can hear his every thought, only to discover that everything he knows about his own origin is a lie. Armed with only a knife and aided by loyal Manchee, the sweetest, stupidest dog known to man (“The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say. About anything.â€), Todd finally becomes a man when he faces down both an army and his single greatest fear. Though this intense and monstrously entertaining novel is just shy of 500 pages, it flies by at rocket speed. With an excellent sense of pacing and action, author Patrick Ness uses short, cliff-hanging chapters to slowly reveal the ugly truth that forms the basis of Todd’s world. Exquisite world building and well-rendered characterizations round out this stellar sci-fi offering. My only gripe? The abrupt ending, which left Todd in peril and several plot questions still unanswered. Luckily, this is only the first book in a trilogy, but oh, what sweet agony waiting for the next one! Though Knife is available now, you might want to wait until you have Book 2 in hand before starting down the path with Todd and sweetly muddled Manchee.
Dogface by Jeff Garigliano
Fourteen-year-old Loren’s first mistake was torching the golf course. His next was trusting his mom’s slimy golf pro boyfriend when he said they were going “camping.†Instead, Loren’s mom and her vindictive beau end up dropping him off at Camp Ascend!, a run-down boot camp for wayward teens. The golf course fire was the last straw in a long line of military “maneuvers†the Green Beret-obsessed Loren carried out that finally land him in the dubious care of the “Colonel,†a professional scammer who wouldn’t know a Green Beret from a Navy Seal. The Colonel, his uber-high maintenance wife Kitty and her Neanderthal brother Donovan are the camp’s only staff, and their methods of tamping down turbulent teen behavior are less than orthodox. But they’ve never dealt with a kid like Loren, who actually has some knowledge of espionage & guerilla warfare–even if it only comes from movies. Loren proceeds to turn the camp on its ear by kidnapping Kitty, smoke-bombing Donovan, and stealing the Colonel’s Swiss bank account numbers. But Donovan, whose brain really is the size of a bottle cap, finally gets wily Loren under his ape-like paw. And that’s when the fun REALLY starts. This raucous send-up of a Dr. Phil-type teen boot camp special is a clever indictment of the pop psychology media that touts “tough love” as the answer to all teen troubles. At times Donovan’s pea-brained violent behavior is truly terrifying, but Kitty’s vapid obsession with mail-order spa products and Loren’s dumb-luck escapes help lighten the sometimes dark story. This is the perfect book for those of you who always suspected that adults aren’t nearly as smart as they pretend to be!
Into the Volcano by Don Wood
Brothers Sumo and Duffy are completely confused when they are abruptly yanked out of school one day by a mysterious cousin they’ve never met, Mister Come-and-Go, “the only man in the world to graduate with honors from Cambridge and…go three years undefeated in the International Extreme Street-Fighting Tourney.†When informed by their harried father that Come-and-Go will be taking them for a hastily planned visit to their eccentric, gout-ridden aunt Lulu’s island home of Kocalaha, optimistic Duffy is thrilled while pessimistic Sumo is bummed and more than a little frightened (“Shark attacks!†“Hostile natives!†“Tidal waves!â€) Once there, the boys are informed that they will be accompanying Come-and-Go and his crew of native sailors and divers on a dubious “expedition,†presumably for the purpose of leading tourists through the maze of volcanic island paradises. But when Come-and-Go takes the boat straight into the heart of an active volcano, Sumo realizes that the adults aren’t setting a new tourist trap, they’re looking for something–something very valuable and somehow related to his scientist Mom, who is supposedly conducting research in Borneo. Sensing danger greater than that they have already faced, Sumo and Duffy set out on their own to discover the secret of the volcano for themselves. And that’s when the REAL adventure begins…my adolescent friends, I have never seen anything quite like Don Wood’s Into the Volcano. While the art and lettering remind me somewhat of my favorite indi-graphic novel, The Interman
Mexican WhiteBoy by Matt de la Pena
“He’s Mexican because his family’s Mexican, but he’s not really Mexican. His skin is dark like his grandma’s sweet coffee, but his insides are as pale as the cream she mixes in.†Danny Lopez is torn between the private school world of his divorced white mother and the San Diego barrio of his Mexican father’s family. Feeling like he doesn’t fully belong in either, he focuses on his passion for baseball, and improving the erratic pitches that have kept him off the prep school team. When his mother decides to go live with her wealthy white boyfriend in San Francisco, Danny opts instead to spend the summer with his father’s family in San Diego. There he meets Uno, a trash-talking half black, half Hispanic kid, also with a divorced mom. Uno understands Danny’s split background and helps him use his fast pitch to cook up hustles at local ball fields. These two boys have Big League dreams. But they’ll both have to learn to come to terms with their mixed heritages and the confusing roles their absentee dads have played in their lives before they can achieve their goals. Matt de la Pena scores a home run with this richly characterized story of two boys struggling to discover the sort of men they want to be. Full of authentic, raw dialogue liberally peppered with Spanish, de la Pena’s follow-up to his thought provoking first novel Ball Don’t Lie
Getting the Girl by Susan Juby
Height challenged freshman Sherman Mack loves the ladies. Really loves them. “Sometimes I think I might die of girls. Like one will get too close and I’ll just be over.†He blames this benevolent love of all female kind on his young mom, a burlesque dancer who he worries “may be trying to make me gay…my mother is into glitter. This is very damaging for a developing male.†Still, “living with my mother and her dancing and dressing up…has been an education in the ways of womankind.†Because of his “concern for the welfare of all ladies,†the brutal practice of ostracizing certain girls at his high school just because a mysterious “Defiler†posts their picture on all the bathroom mirrors bothers him more than it might the average teenage boy. So when his crush object Dini Trioli looks like she may be in danger of becoming Defiled, Sherman creates Mack Daddy Investigations, his own detective operation, planning to expose the Defiler once and for all. But between trying to spy on suspect lacrosse players and conduct interviews with the smokin’ hot “Trophy Wives,†(the most popular girls at school) Sherman also finds himself falling in love—and not with Dini. Instead, someone much closer is slowly stealing his heart. Can Sherman stay objective long enough to solve the case of the Dastardly Defiler? Or will his predilection for lovely ladies end up blinding his private eye? Susan Juby’s hilarious story of high school hierarchy and the one super nerd who’s determined to stand up for what’s right even if he has to topple Trophy Wives to do it is equal parts Say Anything and The Pink Panther. Sherman’s dialogues with his fellow dorks ring funny and true, as do his exchanges with his quirky mom, who is just a little too frank: “I won’t be here for dinner…We’re practicing some new routines. Adrienne just bought a pole. Lots of fun.” Don’t miss one of the sweetest little sleepers of 2008!