Cuba My Revolution by Inverna Lockpez and Dean Haspiel with Jose Villarrubia

Inverna Lockpez was 17 in 1958; she joined many other Cubans in rejoicing the overturn of Batista's corrupt government and the coming to power of Fidel Castro. Lockpez was not quickly disillusioned, even when the darker side of the revolution began to overshadow her idealistic hopes and dreams. Eventually, in the mid-1960s, she fled to the United States, where she has become a noted sculptor. Lockpez and two additional artists use the graphic novel format to fictionalize this memoir of a dramatic period in her life - and the lives of many other Cubans.

In the novel, Sonya is the protagonist. She wants to study art, but believes that she will serve the revolution better as a doctor. When Sonya is sent as a medic to the Bay of Pigs during the U.S. invasion, she witnesses the horrors of war. There is an atmosphere of such fear and suspicion that Sonya is mistaken for a CIA agent and is taken to Havana, imprisoned and tortured. Lockpez talks about this in a short interview that is available online at PRI's The World; she says the book depicts only the tip of the iceberg of what she experienced. Amazingly, this episode did not sour Sonya/Lockpez on the revolution - that came later.

The illustrations by Dean Haspiel are in a blocky, surrealist style in shades of gray with striking additions of the colour red, painted by Jose Villarrubia. See samples here (PRI's The World, again). Readalike: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.

The Popularity Papers by Amy Ignatow

Lydia and Julie are two girls in Grade 5 doing "Research for the Social Improvement and General Betterment of Lydia Goldblatt & Julie Graham-Chang" - which is the subtitle of their joint secret writing project. Julie illustrates the book and they both write down their observations of the popular girls at school. It's not really a graphic novel, but it does have a lot of pictures. It's definitely a hoot.

The girls come up with plenty of harebrained schemes that backfire, like their plan to get their parents to change their minds and allow them to have cell phones. End result is that one of Julie's two dads gives her his really old cell phone. It has a screen that doesn't work, the numbers on the buttons have been rubbed off, the antenna is chewed up by their cat (named "Bad Cat") and the whole thing is held together by duct tape. Lydia's mother gets her "The ladybug: a cell phone for children! It's horrible! It looks like I'm talking into a big plastic bug! I might as well come to school wearing diapers!"

I loved that Julie's parents - Daddy and Papa Dad - are a fact of life; it's no big deal that they are gay. They love her, support her, scold her and embarrass her, just like other parents in the book. Lydia and Julie are memorable characters that will endear themselves to readers in Grade 4 and up who enjoy funny stories about friendship, school and families.

The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

Somehow I managed to listen to two audiobooks in a row that were narrated in first person by a young woman who didn't have a mother and had just lost an older sibling. The Sky is Everywhere is aimed at an older readership than Mockingbird - I'd recommend it to Grade 9 and up (because of sexual activity) - and that recommendation is an enthusiastic one. It's a romance and I loved it. Really! If you follow my blog, you know this doesn't happen often. Like, almost never. I think the last romance I enjoyed this much was I Capture the Castle.

I'll back up and give you the summary. Lennon (Lennie) Walker is 17 when her sister Bailey suddenly dies. The two have lived with their grandmother and their uncle ever since their mother abandoned them 16 years earlier. Lennie has read Wuthering Heights 23 times. She plays clarinet and she has never had a boyfriend. A month after Bailey dies, Lennie falls for Joe, a new guy in her band class. At the same time, she finds herself very attracted to Bailey's boyfriend Toby. Grief, despair and hormones lead Lennie into some poor choices. What is especially amazing is how she comes through it all.

There are some fabulous quirky secondary characters, the northern California setting is vivid and the writing is poetic with plenty of humour too. I listened to an audiobook, so I can't give you much in the way of examples of Nelson's style. Here are a couple of quotes other readers noted: "It's as if someone vacuumed up the horizon while we were looking the other way." (Lennie describing the depth of her family's sorrow.) "Our tongues have fallen madly in love, gotten married and moved to Paris... Heathcliff and Cathy have nothing on us." (Lennie kissing Joe.) Kudos to Nelson for including a scene with an inappropriate erection (and at least one other time when a penis embarrassed its owner). Real life is awkward. Oh, and I'll also mention that Lennie's uncle Big "smokes more pot than the entire 11th Grade." Teens aren't the only ones with interesting lives in this novel.

A nice touch in the Brilliance Audio edition (7.25 hours; read by Julia Whelan) is the clarinet and guitar instrumental duet that opens and closes each CD, evoking the piece of music Joe writes for Lennie.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris

In his latest collection, David Sedaris switches from his usual subject - himself - to tell cynical stories about other people instead. Except he turns them into animals. The result is both funny and dark. Act like a doormat and get eaten. Be self-important and overbearing and get eaten. Delude your self-righteous self and get eaten. The fables don't all end in death, but expect a lot of sorry conclusions. Illustrations by Ian Falconer (creator of the fabulous Olivia picturebooks) add to the black charm. I look forward to hearing Sedaris at the Winspear in Edmonton tonight.

Listen to him online here.

Mockingbird (mok'ing-burd) by Kathryn Erskine

Life is really hard for Caitlin Smith. She is in Grade 5 and has no friends. She has Asperger's. Her mom died of cancer a while back. Her beloved older brother, Devon, has just been killed in a school shooting. This is Caitlin's story about dealing with grief and finding closure.

It is a decent book, but I was surprised that it won the Young People's Literature National Book Award. I would have picked either One Crazy Summer or Ship Breaker as the winner; these have more layers to explore and invite rereading. Mockingbird, on the other hand, is a straight-forward story. I normally enjoy first-person narration, but Caitlin's voice is really annoying. Realistically so, I guess. For example, when her father was too sad to make supper, Caitlin said, "It's 6:30" over and over until she got a reaction out of him. I don't know that I'd have the patience to deal with an autistic child. She is a likable girl, however, and won my heart in the end.

I like to learn things when I read. I probably got some insights into the spectrum of behaviours that are possible with autism, but the fact that I found most memorable is that Virginia has a state dog, the coon hound. Why doesn't Canada have provincial dogs?

I listened to the unabridged Recorded Books edition (4.5 hours) - Angela Jayne Rogers is the reader. Readlikes for children in Grade 4-6: Rules by Cynthia Lord and The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd, both of which have autistic protagonists.

Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum

In a series of interconnected stories, a portrait of Beatrice Hempel emerges. Her mother is a Chinese immigrant and her father was mixed caucasian American. It took me a while to warm to Beatrice, who is rather baffled by life, bumbling along in her role as a young teacher in a junior high school. I was won over by her good-natured honesty in her interactions with her students. In the second story, Accomplice, I cheered her courage in choosing This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff for her Grade 7 English class study. When challenged by a parent who objects to the use of profanity in the book, she defends her choice eloquently.

Beatrice isn't sure she is cut out for the teaching profession. In Yurt, a story about a teacher who comes back to visit after taking a year of stress leave, Beatrice muses that a teacher has no time for wallowing in wretchedness. "The curriculum was always marching on, relentlessly: the scrambling dash from one unit to the next, the ancient Egyptians melting into the ancient Greeks, the blur of check marks and smiley faces, the hot rattling breath of the photocopier, book reports corrected shakily on the bus, the eternal night of parent-teacher conferences, dizzy countdowns to every holiday, and the dumb animal pleasure of rest. One could be quite unhappy and never have the chance to know it." She finds herself looking "longingly at a patch of ice on the pavement," realizing that "if she were to fall and fracture her leg in several places, then she wouldn't have to go to school."

One story takes us back to Beatrice in her early teens and the final story is an encounter years in the future with a former student. The stories together give glimpses into the events that shape Beatrice's journey through life. Very satisfying for readers like me who love intimate character portrayals and lyrical language. I enjoyed her writing so much that I'll include another quote:

"At the entrance to the library, Ms. Cruz sat behind her enormous wraparound desk. It resembled a sort of cockpit, its high sides studded with librarian paraphernalia, Ms. Cruz wheeling expertly about the interior in her ergonomic chair. The desk had two levels; the lower level was intended for the librarian's use as she tried to do her work, while the higher level was meant for those standing around the desk and bothering the librarian.

The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe

A Canada Reads winner from several years back, The Last Crossing probably doesn't need much promotion from me. It's a richly layered historical fiction, told from multiple viewpoints, about a couple of English brothers who go to North America in the nineteenth century to search for their missing missionary sibling. A woman is also one of the central protagonists; Lucy Stovall is looking for her younger sister's murderer and she joins the Englishmen's party.

This is a book that I've meant to read for years, so it was a happy coincidence to come across the BTC audiobook at the same time as I was nearly finished listening to a different book. The abridged BTC edition (5 hours) is enjoyably narrated by five different actors. The only thing I didn't like was that the tracks are all between 15 and 17 minutes in length. That means that I often had to re-listen to what I'd already heard, depending on where I left off the story. I prefer the more common audiobook style of changing tracks every few minutes.

Readalikes: The Outlander by Gil Adamson, for another book set in the early years of southern Alberta with a strong sense of place and vivid characters. Fool's Crow by James Welch, for life in the late nineteenth century from the Blackfoot point of view in the same general area as The Last Crossing.