A Home For Mr. Easter

By Brooke A. Allen
NBM Publishing

Tesana is a teenage girl lacking love. Her mother belittles her behavior, and the kids at school make fun of her. She is huge—both very tall and very overweight. She feels like a walking target, so it’s understandable that she has learned to escape into her imagination. When the bus ride home sucks, she dreams up a unicorn to carry her across the city. But daydreams can’t make everything better. When the popular jocks and cheerleaders try to make a victim of a bunny rabbit, Tesana unleashes all her pent-up anger on them.

This is no ordinary bunny. He lays Easter eggs! He talks! Everyone thinks Tesana is crazy, but she knows the truth. She resolves to help Mr. Easter get back home. In order to do this, they have to retrace the route that brought him to the high school: a pet shop, a science lab, and a magician’s show. At every stop there’s someone who wants that bunny back, and soon there’s a small army chasing Tesana and Mr. Easter.

A Home for Mr. Easter is defined by its chaos. Tesana feels attacked on all sides, and then she actually is. The plot follows the logic of a dreamer, so magical things are suddenly allowed. The laws of the real world are stretched and twisted.

Though this graphic novel style isn’t really my favorite—it delights in the misshapen—I appreciate what Allen has succeeded in doing. What I don’t enjoy may make the book all the richer for some readers. Tesana’s world is ugly; she deals with ugly people.

Along the way, Tesana slowly excises some of her demons. By the time they find Mr. Easter’s true home, she is less angry and has had some of her deepest beliefs validated. Through the bedlam, she and her mother become allies, instead of enemies. The fairy tale ends happily.

And yet, A Home for Mr. Easter contains a great deal of insight, slipped into the subtext. Brooke Allen gives just enough clues for us to get a rich impression of what Tesana’s inner and physical lives are like. The characters are expressive, leaving no doubt about how something is being said or the emotion it’s being said with.

I did enjoy the story, and its fantastic nature. The range of emotion is powerful, taking one through disbelief, righteous anger, fear, and pathos. Allen is clearly talented and confident in her craft.

Review by Richenda Gould

The Carrie Diaries

By Candace Bushnell
Balzer and Bray

Sex and the City the television series ended six years ago. One might find this hard to believe, considering the characters and the lavish lifestyles they live have been far from gone in the mainstream media. The latest installment in the SATC enterprise is The Carrie Diaries, author Candace Bushnell’s young-adult novel that introduces audiences to Carrie Bradshaw as they’ve never seen her before—seventeen, virginal, and unsure of how to fulfill her dream becoming a writer. The young Bradshaw struggles through adolescence the same way her adult self struggled through her thirties, and with just as much, if not more, wit and insight. It’s easy to see how Carrie became Carrie as Bushnell chronicles a very real, and entertaining, teenage experience using the skills we’ve come to know her for: realistic dialogue, relatable, yet flawed, friendships; and capturing the excitement and emotion the first moments of love.

As a feminist scholar and critic, and an advocate for girl-friendly media, I was plagued by very familiar annoyances in the reading. Although adult Carrie admits in SATC (season four, episode seventeen) that her father left when she was a toddler, Bushnell posits high-school Carrie as the eldest of three girls being raised by their father since their mother died a few years earlier. Although a single dad raising three young women is certainly an alternative to the status-quo, it is not more or less feminist than a mother working full time and raising three daughters. And in the case of the latter, it provides something very important missing in both fiction and film—positive female role models.

The debate over Bushnell’s characters and their choices has been raging since the debut of the original series. In The Carrie Diaries, the author offers her own feminist commentary that is neither subtle, nor convincing. In a chapter dedicated to Carrie’s discovery of feminism, the twelve-year-old visits her local library to see her mother's favorite (fictional) feminist Mary Gordon Clark speak. The young Bradshaw is chagrined by the woman’s gruff and judgmental manner, leaving her to ponder “How can you be a feminist when you treat other women like dirt?” An excellent question, though I’d be interested in asking Bushnell “Why all feminists must be represented as angry, elite meanies?”

Unlike her adult counterpart, whose friendships offered support, honesty and resilience in the face of obstacles, the high school Carrie is surrounded by a group of friends that are competitive, highly emotional, or just plain bitchy. Her most passionate moments include falling for a narcissistic but gorgeous guy who eventually cheats on her with her best friend, developing her voice as a writer with the support of the Brown-attending George, and eventually being published in the school paper, with the help and support of the paper’s editor—her friend’s boyfriend.

As lover of pop-culture and an advocate for media literacy among the youth, especially girls, I was encouraged to find the positive elements of a story that will surely resonate with a large audience. Although Carrie’s mother is absent in reality, she is ever present in the lives of her daughters, all of which are struggling to maintain her legacy while evolving into who they will be as individuals. The biting yet quirky humor that endeared me to Carrie on SATC punctuates the tensest moments in the novel as Carrie offers teen-appropriate insights like, “Funny always makes the bad things go away.”

Unfortunately, comparing the young Carrie to the character she became on the series leaves me no less than disappointed. The Carrie created here comes out an evolved and matured being, moving forward into the next phase of her life, something that was remiss of her character when the SATC series ended, and further exacerbated in the following two films. In fact, I’d favor a film version of The Carrie Diaries over both SATC films.

Review by Alicia Sowisdral

The Solitude of Prime Numbers

By Paolo Giordano
Penguin

My best friend often teasingly tells me that the books I recommend to her are all too depressing and sad. I always counter that I recommend books that make me laugh. Now, that either means that I have a sick sense of humor, or it simply illustrates that the stories I most enjoy reading combine painful topics and awkward characters with humor, sarcasm, and witty writing.

Paolo Giordano’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers is exactly such a book. Giordano’s debut novel is the story of Alice and Mattia, two awkward and painfully lonely teenagers. Alice is marked by a childhood skiing accident that leaves her limping and deeply insecure about her body. In those cruel teenage years, she develops an eating disorder in an attempt to regain some control over her body. Mattia is haunted by suffocating guilt after the disappearance of his twin sister when he was nine years old. Alice and Mattia connect over their pain, their awkwardness, and their acute sense that they don’t fit in. But their bond is fragile, subtle, and built on a silent agreement that neither reveal the source of their pain to the other. Even in their connection, they remain isolated and lonely, never fully able to overcome what keeps them emotionally locked into their own worlds.

Eventually, their lives go in different directions and they separate, without ever openly communicating what they feel for each other. But despite being thousands of miles apart, neither Alice nor Mattia is willing or able to let go of their unusual bond. Reunited by a chance encounter, they are faced with a decision: to truly let the other in or return to a life without the other.

Giordano masterfully paints a world full of pain, loneliness, and love. While the humor in The Solitude of Prime Numbers is very subtle, it is there, in the background. It makes the tragedies bearable, the loneliness less hopeless. So yes, this novel is sad and depressing. But it is also incredibly powerful, and it will make you chuckle softly from time to time as you follow Alice and Mattia in their struggle to survive their childhood experiences.

Review by Annette Przygoda

I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World

By Eve Ensler
Villard

I'll tell you why I bothered picking up I Am an Emotional Creature: (1) I loved the graffiti-like cover, which reminded me of the doodling I used to pen over my books in high school, and (2) I really respect and enjoy Eve Ensler's writing. I saw a performance of The Vagina Monologues and loved the subversive way she used humor and fictional stories to tackle real women's issues around the world. So, when I saw that she had released a similar collection, but targeted for girls and teens, I instantly had to pick it up.

I think this book is so important because young girls today are growing up so quickly, and there are less outlets for them to discuss important issues, like abusive relationships and safe sex, or at least, it isn't coming from a source that is from "their generation." Peppered throughout the collection are statistics called "Girl Facts" with shocking numbers on prostitution, sex slavery, eating disorders, and other girl-related issues. Apart from the Girl Facts, though, I loved how these ideas and issues are tackled through the voices of other young women and girls around the world. This collection of monologues, poems, and short stories creates a sisterhood, almost, of females who share similar bonds, despite background, interests, language, etc. That kind of unity is so great and empowering, especially during that awkward period where young girls feel like no one else feels this awkward emotions or that no one "gets" them. I think with so much real suffering happening in other parts of the world, it's difficult to remember that girls in first-world countries have their own voices and stories needing to be told, and just because it isn't anything newsworthy, doesn't mean it isn't a problem or question or anxiety worth addressing.

That being said, my favorite pieces in the collection were the fictionalized accounts of the young women in other parts of the world (as in, not America or the UK). There is a great story called "Free Barbie," about a young Chinese girl working in an assembly-line doll factory, and probably my favorite piece is an epistolary poem/letter about a young female suicide bomber. In all of these stories, especially the ones from girls in developing countries, there is such strength and resilience in their voices that even someone past puberty can feel their empowerment and be proud to be a girl.

I really love what this collection does. And I love how it celebrates girls. I think, considering the target audience, this book is definitely five stars in terms of relevance and importance, but the writing wasn't always impeccable. I mean, I don't think it has to be Pulitzer prize-worthy to accomplish the goal Ensler was going for in motivating young girls; but to be fair, while some stories about sex trafficking or dealing with being a "masculine" girl were so amazing, some of the more experimental free verse passages didn't always do it for me.

Also, I think I might have benefited more if I had read this about five years ago, when the insecurity and all that was more intense. (P.S. This does reference some graphic sexual and adult themes, which are important to read about, but some more conservative families or younger readers should be aware of that.) Regardless, I loved it and will definitely keep it around to flip through and read a couple more times throughout my lifetime.

Review by Renée McDonald

Cross-posted at Notes in the Margin

Mathilda Savitch

By Victor Lodato
Picador

Despite years of being told not to, I immediately judged Victor Lodato’s novel Mathilda Savitch by the cover. I opened it expecting to speed through a mature version of Harriet the Spy with a twist of Tim Burton’s eccentricity. The title suggested a fantastic world not unlike Coraline; however, the fantasy of Mathilda Savitch is of the saddest shade.

Young Mathilda Savitch is a teenager who introduces herself in the first line of the book by saying, “I want to be awful.” Disoriented by the sudden death of her older sister Helene, Mathilda descends into an internal world of obsessive compulsive habits, nightmares, and delusion. Her home reflects her dark imagination, as her mother has succumbed to depression and alcoholism while her father weakly tries to maintain the family’s previous levity.

Mathilda Savitch is bitterly funny at times, reminiscent of The Catcher in the Rye or The Bell Jar. While it’s supposed to be a coming-of-age story—addressing menstruation, sexual experimentation, as well as basic rebellion—it feels more like a moment fixed in time.

While there are wonderful moments in the book, it isn’t flawless. A parallel theme of terrorism felt superficial and gratuitous. I also wasn’t completely convinced by Mathilda’s voice, especially when it came to puberty and sexuality. As a woman, I did not sense authenticity in these moments as I did when she was frustrated with her parents or missing her sister. Her thoughts, which compose the majority of the book, often sound more like staged monologues.

In fact, Lodato is a playwright and a poet, and this is his debut novel. Bits of the text read like poetry—“Window eyes, a window nose, and a door for a mouth”—while other parts sound like a play. Overall, however, Lodato has captured a painful stream of consciousness. I could imagine myself as a sometimes unhappy teenager wanting to find a dark place, alone, to obsess over Mathilda Savitch like a secret friend. This is a book worth reading, and although a fast read, it is not best suited for the beach.

Review by Claire Burrows