Review of Small Avalanches and Other Stories (Paperback)

Oates, Joyce Carol.Small Avalanches and Other Stories. HarperTempest, 2003. lib ed 0-06-001218-8 $17.89

Oates collection of previously published short stories thought to have teen appeal is dedicated for the bad girls. Quite fitting, for protagonists include sisters who deliberately destroy their twice-divorced mothers relationship with a new potential mate, a is pursued by a stranger, Melissa, who willingly trades a friends life for her own; Sunny, whose refusal of a marriage proposal drives a boy to suicide; and Melanie, who lets her beautiful but naïve cousin Steff take off with a man met on the Internet. Stranger danger abounds in these stories as girls on the brink of womanhood lose their innocence through interaction with pedophiles, crazy neighbors, and other shady characters.
Oates adeptly portrays that tensions of wanting to be a grownup and a little girl all at once, and chronicles the way girls change sleekly change personas, depending on whom they are talking to. The literary merit of the collection is to be expected from the winner of the Pen/Malamud Lifetime Achievement Award in Short Fiction; the language feels surreal in most stories, and dialogue is not typical casual teenspeak. The stories are technically flawless, but wouldnt be my first choice for a booktalk.



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Review of This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record (Paperback)

You better write a darn good YA novel if you are going to invoke -- right in your title -- a key line from one of the greatest teen anthems of all time. Susannah Felts has done just that. This is a great story that vividly captures that turning point in life when you are nowhere near being "grown-up" enough to handle or even fully understand all the big stuff going on around you, but there it is, in your face and under your skin, and you've just got to deal with it all in the best way you can. It's a real treat experience this period through the eyes of the main character Vaughn, to see how she handles a difficult but deeply significant friendship, or how she embraces and explores the art of photography. Vaughn is a smart, self-aware young girl who isn't yet comfortable in her own skin, but you know she will be at some point, sooner than most, but not any time soon. This is a real treasure of a novel. I hope you know that this should go down on your reading list, like, now. The good feeling you get will stay with you. Highly recommended.

Product Description
When the school year at tony Nashville Arts and Science ends, Vaughn Vance ditches her upper class friends for a summer of solitude. Content to be alone and work on her photography, Vaughn's seclusion is disrupted when she meets her new neighbor, Sophie Birch. The two form a tentative friendship, hanging out at Dragon Park with the rest of Nashville's teens. There, the relationship deepens: Sophie becomes the subject of Vaughn's artistic experiments and Vaughn becomes the subject of Sophie's socialexperimentation as she pushes Vaughn to loosen up and let down her guard. After a fight with her mother, Sophie moves in with Vaughn and her academic parents who embrace Sophie's wild side - until the girls push each other a step too far. In her debut novel, Susannah Felts perfectly capturesthe feel of growing upSouthern-style, the universal push-pull of adolescent limit testing, and, above all, the intoxicating power that comes with burgeoning creativity.

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Review of Daughters of Eve (Paperback)

This was a great book! How could anyone say it wasn't!I guess a lot of young mystery readers just can't understand it. It is not just about feminism-the whole feminism issue is just an example. What Lois Duncan is trying to get across is that this Daughters of Eve club, is like a cult. It explains what a cult can do to you-how it can suck you in. It also shows how taking things too far, like feminism in this case, can be really screwed up. I loved the way it ended, I didn't expect it to end at that moment! But it did! It was so shocking. Some people say that they hated the book, but that just goes to show that some people can't read anything with a little depth....just read the book; it's awesome.

Product Description
A high school teacher uses the guise of feminist philosophy to manipulate the lives of a group of girls with chilling results.

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