If you liked the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer - book list

If. You Liked. Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. There. I said it.

I have put together this list I don't know how many times in the past couple of years, and I guess I just have to bite the bully (get it? like Twilight shoves all the other books around?) and admit that: 1) People want to read Twilight and 2) People LIKE Twilight.

I mean, why am I such a snob about these books anyway? What was I reading when I was eleven? I'll tell you what I was reading when I was eleven. No wait, read this book - Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading by Lizzie Skurnick - and you will know what I was reading when I was eleven. And I turned out ok. Reasonably ok. Ok shut up - am I exploring my nascent sexuality with my twin brother or luring my arch-enemy into a leech-infested pool? No. I am not. That was a rhetorical question by the way.

And maybe that's setting the bar kind of low, but I think it is some kind of proof that young readers of Twilight are not going to grow up and fall in love with pale, stalker-y older men. Pale, stalker-y older men are in fact CREEPY in real life, and almost all young women are viscerally and instinctively aware of this. We can trust our girls. (Hi, Olivia! We can trust you, right?)

There's still the issue, recently pointed out by someone at the Princeton Romance Writers Conference (and I am too lazy to go looking for it so I am going to paraphrase), that these paranormal romance novels represent something of a throwback to the old doctor/nurse kind of power differential that turned so many of us against romance novels to begin with (think Mr. Rochester and his employee - Jane - in Jane Eyre). Nowadays, romance novels feature women who are just as strong as, and on equal social footing with, the men, but in Twilight et al, the male character is by definition more powerful than the girl - he's immortal! he can change into an animal! or, uh, sparkle!

But that I don't know what to do about. EXCEPT. To recommend the following pretty good books as follow up reads for people who enjoyed the romance, the drama, the imaginative world of Twilight. Some of these books feature characters with supernatural powers or are set in alternate or future worlds, but some do not. There's at least one cute boy in each, but none of them has a female protagonist as wimpy as Bella.




The Luxe by Anna Godberson. Soapy and irresistably fancy, dripping with drama. Look at that dress!

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I reviewed it here earlier. Catching Fire, the next book in the series, has just been published.

Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception by Maggie Stiefvater. An extremely cute boy, some psychic torment, a well-written, lovely setting, and a harp. It's all good.



Prom Nights from Hell. Stories by Stephenie Meyer, Meg Cabot, Lauren Myracle, and other writers who are all about what it is to be a girl.

Prom Dates from Hell (Maggie Quinn: Girl vs Evil, Book 1) by Rosemary Clements-Moore. Good-looking teens, more dramatic than it looks, snappy dialogue. I reviewed the third book in this series a couple weeks ago.



Tithe by Holly Black. Anything by Holly Black, in fact.

Margo Lanagan's Black, White, and Red books. Dark, with a side of strange, drizzled with a stylish-sexy port wine reduction.



The somewhat overlooked Troll Bridge by Jane Yolen and her son, Adam Stempel. Music, magic, peril, attitude.

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. The first in the Gemma Doyle Trilogy, about drama and magic in a Victorian boarding school.

Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause. Ms. Klause has been writing about the allure of the supernatural boy for longer than anyone, and in this one, the boy's a werewolf. Grrr!




Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith



Peeps by Scott Westerfeld

Graceling by Kristin Cashore. Horses, swords, special powers, a fiery heroine, and a gorgeous guy. The sequel, Fire, will be out in early October.


and what the heck... you know what else any red-blooded reader of the Twilight books will like?



Flowers in the Attic, by V.C. Andrews. It's wrong. It's hot. It's so hot that it's wrong and it's so wrong that it's hot. And you just know "V.C. Andrews" is a pseudonym. Who do you think it is really? Wonder if that's what Salinger's been up to all this time.

Highway to Hell, a novel by Rosemary Clement-Moore - review

I am woefully behind in my YA reviewing. I have been reading YA books all summer - in part because I like YA books, partly because I got so many YA ARCs at BookExpo, and of course, partly because I like to be able to recommend books to teenagers.

But I haven't been able to bring myself to review them. Sure, Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception by Maggie Steifwhatever was fine, with romance and uncertainty and music and telekinesis, and the similar but less romance-y Troll Bridge: A Rock'n' Roll Fairy Tale I would recommend without hesitation.

The forthcoming Sphinx's Princess, in which Esther Friesner imagines the pre-royal life of Nefertiti (King Tut's wife) the same way she did Helen of Troy's in Nobody's Princess, was perfectly serviceable clean teen historical romance fiction. The Goldsmith's Daughter, about an Aztec teen who crosses gender lines to protect her family, was terrific - right up until she fell in love with a conquistador. Hey, doesn't everybody love a good-Nazi love story?

I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and I have independent confirmation that YES it is a good choice for young adult readers. Wondergirl, my favorite middle schooler, read it over the summer at my suggestion, then rented the movie and laughed all the way through it. Hee hee hee!

But WHYYY have I not reviewed all these things? What is the MATTER with me? Have I lost my joy in reading and nowadays I am just plowing through these novels for the sake of getting them done? WOE!




Cough. That was probably a little more melodramatic than the situation warrants. Anyway. I am, by contrast, supernaturally excited about this book, the most recent in the Maggie Quinn, Girl vs. Evil series. I am a newcomer to Maggie, her friend D&D Lisa the evil genius, her paladin of a boyfriend, and the trouble - EEEVIL trouble - that seems to dog their footsteps. I picked up the book because I liked the coolio Craig Phillips cover, and because on it, Maggie wears aviator sunglasses while motoring along in her Jeep with no doors.

And now I've just finished it and I'm happy, I'm happy happy happy. Maggie and Lisa are geeky plus good-looking, but in a believable, Kristen-Bell-in-Fanboys kind of way. Their banter is witty but not so witty that it sounds fake. They call each other "moron" with regularity. They are aware that together, they make up Bart Simpson's sisters, and if you point it out, they will roll their eyes so hard they'll almost knock themselves over.

Maggie is psychic and Lisa is a witch, and BF Justin has the looks, the good manners, and the physical competence of a Riley Finn without all the whining. Seriously, I'll never forgive Whedon for what he did to that character. Make him evil, kill him off, but emasculating him like that was just mean.

The plot is TIGHT. There's enough going on that the author could be forgiven for letting a detail or two go unexplained, but she does not. Furthermore, answers are not hurled into the text at the end in any old "Have this droid's memory wiped" manner. They are woven in, sometimes not even overtly. My new pal Rosemary Clement-Moore doesn't seem to think it's necessary for a character to say, "Oh so that's why the demon absorbed that shotgun blast without injury." If it's not a major plot point, she'll let you make that connection yourself, which, I have to say, is extremely generous. If I'd written anything half so clever, you can bet I would be showing off all my tied-off ends like a Boy Scout who just earned his Knots merit badge.

PLUS. Maggie is petite and powerful, and sassy and cute. I'm a geek. But I didn't think of Buffy until page 270, when she tells a giant amalgamated demon who is doing a good job of intimidating her, "You are so full of crap." Of course, now I can't stop.

The book is, somewhat refreshingly, not without God. I am a little weary of the dances that many authors do in order to keep their teen demon-fighting free of any actual discussion of faith. As when Buffy runs into a high school classmate in the cemetery and he asks (about God), "does he exist, by the way? Is there word on that?" and Buffy answers, "Nothing solid."

In this book, Lisa, in particular, is quite concerned about going to Hell after having summoned a demon in a previous book. There are Catholic characters who participate in the Back Demon Back, saying prayers and swinging branding irons.

Our setting is the fictional Dulcina, TX, right down in the foot of Texas, near the Gulf of Mexico. Lucky for us, Clement-Moore knows her Texas. She writes the landscape - its smells and sky, its few features, the effect livestock has on it, and most of all its subtle rises and falls - really well, with unstrained, natural imagery. You get the feeling she's spent some time on a horse.

(I briefly became a little concerned that the "Moore" in "Clement-Moore" was as in Christopher Moore, which would make sense, kind of like when I found out Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld are married, but looks like not. Apparently, though, she and I are the same person, because she lists Television Without Pity and Go Fug Yourself as good wastes of time, and Susan Cooper and Meg Cabot - whose blog writing I thought of more than once while reading this book - as hero authors. Plus she liked Firefly. Awww.)

Funny and smart, exciting and hip, Highway to Hell was just the squirt of lime I needed to cut through my midsummer complacency.

Airhead by Meg Cabot - review

Airhead by Meg Cabot
How can it be that I've never read any Meg Cabot before?

Ahem, actually, I know exactly how that can be, and I'll bet you my colleague TinkerCinderBelleAhontas could tell you too. I am not such a big fan of girly. My hair may be pink, but that's kind of the only pink thing about me. So Princess Diaries? Yeah I'm not likely to pick that up. Queen of Babble? Exact no. When it comes to grownup fiction, I read Chelsea Cain, who, in all fairness, also features a stunningly beautiful heroine in her books, but one who accessorizes with scalpels instead of stilettos.

What made me pick up Airhead then? A strong sense of duty to young adult girl readers? No. Those girls who like Meg Cabot probably already know they like Meg Cabot and don't need me to introduce them. Also, I've never scrupled at recommending Meg Cabot even not having read her. I trust TinkerCinderBelleAhontas, who really enjoys Meg Cabot.

It was seeing Ms. Cabot speak at Book Expo this year. She was introduced by Julie Andrews, and she was appropriately "OH MY GOD y'all, that's JULIE ANDREWS!" even though she knows Julie Andrews from when they made the movie. She was even appropriately "OH MY GOD y'all - a MOVIE!". She doesn't say "y'all," by the way. But she should maybe take it up, it goes good with "OH MY GOD!" She talked about her new series, Airhead, explaining that the brain of a smart, video-game-playing tomboy (Emerson) ends up transplanted into the body of a famous teen supermodel (Nikki), and then admitting that it's maybe not the most realistic book she's ever written. And this is a woman who has written books about an average American girl turning out to be the heir to the throne of a European country, so, as she pointed out, she knows from unrealistic.

Anyway, she was charming and really really funny.

So I picked up Airhead, and I giggled. And I enjoyed the descriptions of the luxe loft life of the supermodel. Plus, I giggled. And I liked the characters, and I got all "Brandon or Dylan" over whether she's going to end up with her homeboy, the secretly studly Christopher or with the dreamy British singer-songwriter Gabriel. (Oh, we all know, don't we?) And - yes you know - I giggled.

AND Y'ALL!!! That is TOTALLY NOT LIKE ME! Do we remember? Hunger Games was almost spoiled for me when it got to the "Brandon or Dylan" part. Same with Graceling! So I am totally crushing on this lighter-than-air, all-romantic-complications-all-the-time girl book? It's amazing. I feel exactly like Em, the tomboy, who has always disdained the girlier things in life, when she realizes that kissing? IS SO GREAT.

Meg Cabot? IS SO GREAT.

LOVE is a good thing to feel, written by Barbara Joosse, illustrated by Jennifer Plecas - review

Love is a good thing to feel, written by Barbara Joosse, illustrated by Jennifer Plecas
My mom knows Barbara Joosse somehow, I should say that. Hasn't influenced me unduly so far: in fact, I've never reviewed any of her books before, and she's written plenty. Seems like a nice lady though.

And she sure does know about LOVE. THIS adorable thing I'm holding in my hands is all about Harriet, who is frizzy-haired and wears striped tights and stomps in puddles and tap dances. Harriet tells us about the ways to say I love you, and what love does for you (it can "make bad better") and how anger and jealousy and sorrow can exist at the same time as love. We need to explain this to kids every chance we get. Harriet also tells us that sponges don't have hearts but worms have five.

And then she sings a song. Now I will sing a song:

Ohhh... you beautiful readers of Pink Me
You are smart and funny and I love your sweaters!
The way you put up with my silly crap
It's like a bubble bath on the Internet!
Happy Valentine's Day, you sweetly-scented shiny and bouncy PEEOPLE!
(And thanks especially to mamele, who called me "mouthy")

Chocolate covered whatevers and ice-cold cocktails for everyone!!

all the wrong people have self-esteem by Laurie Rosenwald - review

all the wrong people have self-esteem by Laurie Rosenwald

OH. MAGAD! This book includes:

1. a DIY update on the Ian Dury song "Reasons to be Cheerful"
2. an advice-for-teens Mad Lib
3. some French and
4. thru 122. many many more useful and funny and brilliantly colored things

PLUS it starts out by saying that nobody interesting ISN'T plagued by doubt. Yeah. Word. This is the NUTS.

Now, you couldn't let it be said that Laurie Rosenwald, the artist who brought us the color book And to Name but Just a Few: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, which I also loved - isn't clever, and doesn't know she's clever. A native New Yorker who teaches a workshop called "How to Make Mistakes on Purpose," she reports in her author (auto)biography that "by the time she was 35 she had to go to Sweden just to calm down." And she peppers this smart, cranky, deep book with plenty of examples of her own wit: after she blow-dries her hair by sticking her head out the car window, a friend asks, "But isn't that city air - dirty?" To which Laurie mentally replies, "Where do you think the air in your blow-dryer comes from - the Swiss Alps?"

But that doesn't mean she's NOT clever. Look at me: I just found out I am incapable of putting a space between the words "go" and "to" as a result of having learned to code when I was about ten - and people still hang out with me, too.

So give Laurie Rosenwald 45 minutes. Do the Mad Lib. Crack yourself up, and let her crack you up. She may be just a little smug, but she's right.

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, read by Cherry Jones - review

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, read by Cherry Jones
I loved these books as a kid - loved the simplicity, loved the ingenuity, thought there was something wrong with me because I couldn't entertain myself for hours (days! months!) playing with wood chips and/or grass. Begged my parents to tap the maple trees out front of our suburban house. Sigh.

Recently, I thought I'd pull them out and see if my boys would be as spellbound as I had been. Well, they are. My copy of Little House in the Big Woods is inscribed "To [Your Neighborhood Librarian], on her eighth birthday -- Love, Granny and Sam," and that was as fascinating to my sons as the Nazca lines are to conspiracy theorists. I can't imagine their ideas of me as a child.

What I didn't expect, however, was that my husband and I would become spellbound as well. After we read Little House in the Big Woods aloud, we switched to audio. Cherry Jones (the president on 24 and Matt Damon's mom in the Ocean's Eleven movies), is the perfect reader for these books. Her voice is both warm and dry - though she sometimes reads with a smile in her voice, she never, ever gets sugary. There's just enough astringency there to give a hint of the extraordinarily isolated and precarious life Pa has signed the family on for, and her slightly measured pace is just right for young listeners. A frequent reader on NPR's Selected Shorts, Ms. Jones has a voice you want to listen to.

That's a real plus, because these books have so much to offer beyond the narrative. The choices that Mrs. Wilder made when she wrote them reveal the changes that she observed in her lifetime. She wrote the books in the 1930's, when she was in her 60's, and took care to scrupulously document such processes as building a log house (with only hand tools and two people) and packing a covered wagon. She takes the time to describe food and objects that, by the 1930's, were no longer in use, like the three-legged iron pot that Ma cooks in over the campfire.

However, many frightening or dramatic events are recounted without much comment and without echo. When the entire Ingalls family is so sick with malaria that none of them can get up for a cup of water, Laura narrates the incident, mentions that it was awfully lucky that one of their (distant) neighbors happened by, and moves on. But - says the adult reader - those people could have died! How many little houses on the prairie ended up little mausoleums on the prairie? And later the adult listener gradually realizes that the family has eaten nothing but meat and cornmeal for the better part of a year. No eggs, no vegetables, no wheat products. If I were Pa, I'd have taught those girls to steal eggs from the prairie chickens.

At the end of the book, Pa learns that they must vacate the land that they have settled and plowed. Without discussion, despair, or dithering, and with a minimum of planning, Pa announces that they are leaving the next day. The family gets up in the morning, puts all their things into the wagon and leaves behind those extraordinary structures that Pa built with his bare hands, seemingly from thin air: the house, the well, the stable, and the plowed field full of seed. That's just what they did, and through the level-headed offices of Mrs. Wilder and Ms. Jones, we hear it, we understand it, and, like Pa and Ma and the girls, we move on.

I don't know if historical fiction will ever get better than this.

Gifts for girls

Girls can be hard to buy for. They're picky! We're picky - us girls. Here are some things to think about when you're buying for girls.




Is she an animal lover?
Korgi by Christian Slade. For anyone age maybe 5 or 6 and up, up, up. Wordless, but not toothless. Unbelievably adorable little corgi dog and his girl (who has wings but I wouldn't call her a fairy) get into trouble with monsters and squidlike aliens and scrap their way out. Black and white, but that doesn't seem to be a problem with this title. And Korgi Book 2 is even better than the first.




Does she like action?
Rapunzel's Revenge by three Hales. Mmm, call this 10 and up. There are bullets and a hint of romance. Also wit. And BEAUTIFUL, detailed color art. I think this is one of the best graphic novels of the year.

The Lost Island of Tamarindby Nadia Aguilar. Age 10 and up. Reviewed earlier.




Any interest in cooking?
The Spatulatta Cookbook. Age 7 and up, but you might be able to push it younger if there is an interested grownup in the house. This is last year's excellent cookbook for kids, but nothing this year tops it. It's two sisters doing the cooking, and they're in most of the pictures, fooling around, demonstrating, having a good time. It's spiral bound, which is so great for cookbooks. And the pictures make the food look appetizing, not weird. The best kid cookbook I've seen this year is Southern Living Kids Cookbook, which kind of surprised me.




Into mysteries?
Ottoline and the Yellow Cat by Chris Riddell. Age 7 and up. Heavily illustrated, this is kind of a bridge book between First Chapter type books and regular chapter books. A lot of the clues are in the crinkly, detailed pictures, which is super fun.

The Far-Flung Adventures series by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell. Age 9 and up. Not as heavily illustrated, super sense of humor. I know an entire class of seven year olds who pushed their reading ability so that they could read one of these books together, and they all loved it.

The 39 Clues. Age 9 and up. Ok ok it's gimmicky as all get-out, with the cards, and the online thing, and the actual prizes, but kids are lapping it up and the authors that are participating are first-rate. Plus the characters are interesting and strongly-written, and the plot is respectably labyrinthine.




Is she curious about the world?
What the World Eats. From the team that brought us Material World: A Global Family Portrait back in 1995 - you know, the book that showed families all over the world in their houses, and with all their stuff brought outside for a picture? Holy crap, we should do that with our house, and see what we can leave out on the curb. But anyway. The new book has the same lush, colorful, giant pictures, the same potent juxtapositions, and results in the same sense of insight about wealth, and health, and opportunity.




And once those insights have been attained, there's Give a Goat, a picture book for kids maybe first grade and up that's all about Heifer International. The kid in the book organizes his class to raise money so that they can purchase a goat via Heifer. Touches on teamwork, responsibility, compassion, arithmetic, and economics. A terrific accompanying gift if you yourself give flocks of chicks for the holidays.

Oh, you've got a teen girl to buy for?
Sorry, you're screwed. Can't make a teen happy. Amazon gift card, baby. That way, if she spends it on The Twilight Saga: Slipcased, you don't have to know about it.

Ahem. Did you really think I was going to leave you in the lurch like that? Naw... here are just a couple ideas for teenage girls.

Crafty crafter?


Get her to make me one of those mohawk hats, will ya?


Not so adeptly crafty, and not as much of an anarchist?


Cute but not kawaii.


Writer?


Ignore the stupid title, this one is an excellent how-to for self-expression, covering technical aspects as well as inspiration.


Artist?


Buy her art supplies, but throw in this one for inspiration.


I'd be tempted to buy actress/mathematician Danica McKellar's new book, Kiss My Math: Showing Pre-Algebra Who's Boss, for a middle school or teen girl, but I'd be afraid it'd look like I was being all preachy. If you can get away with it, you should. The book is legitimately funny and helpful and hard to put down! Who'd'a guessed?

And if she sometimes feels the pressure:


It's wonderful. It's a year in the life of several high school students in Chicago - it's like a reality show with a writer.

Stay tuned for the boy books.
Your pal,
your neighborhood librarian

Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway - review

Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway

Let's roleplay a booktalk for this book:
You: Cool kid, maybe 14 or older (there's plenty of swearing), sporting visual evidence of interest in music. Franz Ferdinand pin, floppy hair, vintage Siouxie and the Banshees t-shirt. Something like that. You may be a girl, but you may be a boy too - even though the protagonist is a girl - and it is a VERY fizzy book - I believe that boy music fans will like it too.
Me: Librarian, pink hair, one large but tasteful visible tattoo.

Commence:
Me: Come with me I have something for you.
You: Er!
Me: No seriously you have to have this. You will like it. It is funny.
You: [Panic!]
Me: Ok, see? Audrey breaks up with her boyfriend, he writes a song about it, it becomes a number-one hit and all of a sudden she's just as famous as he is and half of America hates her because she's the one who broke his heart. And Audrey is REALLY funny and very cool. Oh, and she thinks Karen O is the coolest person in the world.
You: Oh. Oh? Oh! Um, ok!
Me: Oh wait, how old are you? There's a lot of swearing.
You: No yeah it's fine. I'll take the book.

Bonus dialog for parents:
Audrey: MOOOOM! Have you seen my shoes?
Mom: I am not the shoe fairy!
Audrey: But if you were?
Mom: By the garage door.

Dude, we have all been there.

Fanny by Holly Hobbie - review

Fanny by Holly Hobbie
Rare is the book that manages to be both girly and empowering. Many are the books that try. Fanny is the real deal.

Fanny's mom won't buy her a glamorous Connie doll ("I don't like the way Connie dolls look," says Mom. "They're just too... much," and don't you know that feeling!). So, resourceful Fanny cuts up a pair of pink pajamas and makes her own doll - a doll that, despite her blonde hair and big blue eyes, is not... quite... like the Connie dolls her friends are so obsessed with.

There's a lot of pink, and there are dolls, and Fanny feels the pressure of wanting what the other girls have, but she is sweet and creative and loyal, and comes up with her own solutions.

Chiggers by Hope Larson - review

Chiggers by Hope Larson
I read this sweet-but-not-too-sweet graphic novel at the same time, and for the same reason (it's a Cybils nominee), as Betsy, Ms. Fuse #8, did, and I pretty much have to say... what she said.

Is that a cop-out? Yeahhh... but no! She just happens to have written just exactly what I'd've written (except, hrm, more words, 'cause of the part about me being lazy and sometimes being content to just go like, "ME LIKE," and I guess you'd have to say this current review would be an example of that).

Except that, unlike Betsy, I do have some memorable summer camp experiences, both as a camper, at Girl Scout camp and orchestra camp (I played oboe) and, if I'm not mistaken, some G&T camp where we read Walden Two and discussed behavior modification... and as a counselor, at a beautiful hippy-dippy camp up in Maine where I taught candle-making and fencing to Manhattan preteens wearing Echo and the Bunnymen t-shirts (in 1984). And reading Chiggers took me right back to camp, especially to Maine, and I found myself trying to remember the names of the girls in my cabin: tall Allison, shy Betsy, bubbly Deenie, and a girl we called Titsy, whose personality traits you may intuit all on your own.

Chiggers is terrific that way - the art, the plot, the characters all ring true. Even the trees look just right. Why, I remember the morning I found a dead mouse in a trap, and since I didn't have my glasses on I had to bring it right up to my face to see what it was, and then... but I guess that's a story for another blog.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins - review

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
I do approve of science fiction for teenage girls - too much fiction aimed at young women is vapid and self-fulfilling. And I habitually enjoy post-apocalyptic worlds. Also, nothing wrong with a little ultra-violence of the type the kids in this book must engage in. Plus, it's Suzanne Collins, my go-to gal in the children's section - I have yet to meet a kid (boy OR girl) who didn't thank me for introducing them to Ms. Collins's friend Gregor.

So why am I not jumping up and down about The Hunger Games? Let me break it down.

1.
If I think young adult fiction has a mission, and sometimes I think it does, I think it should be to cause young people to question things that have been presented to them - truths (Not the End of the World by Geraldine McCaughrean), values (Uglies), government (Little Brother), commerce (So Yesterday), etc. Ok, yeah granted, books can be just fun too. That's fine. But speculative fiction particularly has this opportunity - because the context of the story is so different, the elements of the book's world that are the same as ours stand out in higher relief.

And to make a long sentence short, I don't think The Hunger Games takes that opportunity. There's no one element that is terribly similar to our world. Even the 'reality show' that is the titular Hunger Games is so dissimilar to our reality shows - watching it is mandatory - that it's hard to tell what, if any, comparison Ms. Collins is inviting.

2.
I found the insertion of a little romance to be tedious. It felt like it was jammed in there to make the book more palatable to the teen girls. I'd like to think that not all teenage girls NEED romance for a book to be relevant to their interests.

I thought when the romance became a major part of the Uglies series, that's where it bogged down. God knows if the next Hunger Games books are all about Katniss choosing between Baker Boy and Hunter Guy, I will be disappointed.

3.
I thought the very best parts of the book were the chapters that described Katniss's home town and the capital city. Suzanne Collins does wonderful detail, as we know from Gregor, and her alternate worlds are richly and roundly imagined and full of dirt and vistas and infrastructure.

I am hoping that Katniss takes a tour of all the districts of her world in the next two books, and leaves both those boys behind.