Five mini-reviews of YA books

I haven’t written a review for any of the books I’ve read since last November so I decided to do a quick catch-up entry. I’ve been on a role with my reading, thankfully, so now the “unfinished” side has changed from the lack chapters read to the incomplete reviews I’ve written. l need to write my reviews in a more timely manner, otherwise I forget that my initial reactions were.

Meyer, Stephenie. Breaking Dawn. Little, Brown and Co., London, 2008. ASIN: B004SIFYYW
Bella and Edward get married but there are complications with a human being in an adult relationship with a vampire. Bella get pregnant by a vampire-human baby that is killing her from the inside. After the child is born, Edward must change Bella into a vampire in order to save her. This creates concerns with the Volturi and the Cullens must build an army of vampires from across the globe to stand up to the ruling class of vampires.
This book took me forever to finish. The wedding was over in a second with no real description, the honeymoon was on “Island Esme” in Portugal where Edward just happened to speak Portuguese. Then after really awkward and brutal nights in the marital bed Bella ends up pregnant with a demon baby – okay, now this is interesting. The middle of the book is in Jacob’s perspective so most of the dialogue is in italicised thoughts between the werewolves. Finally as Bella gives birth in the most dramatic and gory way, she has to be turned into a vampire. But the martyr Bella doesn’t want poor, sweet Edward to know that she is in unspeakable pain so she never even screams as her whole body feels like it’s on fire. This is after she has bones break from giving birth to the demon spawn Renesemee (which is a name no one in the world can pronounce.) Then, of course, Jacob imprints on her (creepy) and then we have to sit for the whole rest of the book to hear about the possibility of a Volturi visit after the hope of cool new born vampire stuff can happen with Bella (because she didn’t want to be out of control so she wasn’t – of course she didn’t.) So there’s even an index with all the characters and clans of vampires who come to defend the Cullens – as if we care at this point because it’s the end of four books.
Anyway, I did like the end where Edward has a glimpse into how Bella felt about him. That was the one redeeming quality in the whole story. Otherwise it just dragged and was just not doing it for me. I think reading all four in a row made me just way too jilted to take the whole thing seriously.

Stiefvater, Maggie. Shiver. Scholastic, New York, 2009. ISBN: 9780545123273
Grace keeps seeing wolves in her back yard. When they become a danger to the town of Mercy Falls, the police take action and try to shoot the wolves. This is when Grace finally meets Sam who has very familiar yellow eyes. This year will be the last time when Sam will be human again and Grace is desperate to keep him with her.
I really liked the story and how it was written but it is a subtle novel – I don’t remember much about it, honestly. A lot of people have reviewed this as “boring” but I quite enjoyed it. I appreciated the language that didn’t exist in the Twilight books (this was listed as an alternative for such fans.) Grace was a character I actually was interested in and Sam played the werewolf boy who was in love with her. Using the two different point of views was a nice way to even out the story because Grace tried to save Sam while Sam was trying to survive. I appreciated that style of story-telling a lot and while I’m not really super eager about reading Stiefvater’s other books, I know I will get to Linger and the Ballad series eventually.

Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. Scholastic, New York, 2008. ISBN: 9780439023528
Katniss Everdene is a teenager from District 12 who has to volunteer for the annual Hunger Games in order to save her little sister Prim. Katniss is thrown into the Capitol where she is created to be a reality-show star for a deadly game. Her partner, Peeta, confesses his love for her and with the insistence by her mentor Haymich, she gives the audience the star-crossed lovers show that they want. Once in the arena she fights to the death before saving herself and Peeta – at least for this year.
Ah, our beloved Katniss! She is the heroine that we all cheer for these days. I made sure to read this before I saw the movies. I had bought the series before moving and I’m proud to say I own a hardcopy and an ebook copy of two of them now.
I know plenty of people have written better, more in-depth reviews about how great these books are. The fantasy, dystopian novel is so well done that you are on the side of Katniss from the first page. I appreciate how the first person point of view works so well and the reality mixed with the touches of science fiction make it that much better of a book.
No, it’s nothing like Twilight. This is amazing.

Collins, Suzanne. Catching Fire. Scholastic, New York, 2009. ISBN: 9780439023498
Now that Katniss is back in District 12 as a winner of the Hunger Games, she has defied the Capitol with her cunning ability to save herself and Peeta. The government is tightening their grip on all of the Districts and after President Snow makes a personal visit to see, and warn Katniss that her actions are not forgotten, she finds herself going back into the arena in a special all-winners fight to the death. What Katniss doesn’t know is that she has now turned into the symbol of a revolt and her survival is eminent for the hope of every district who wants to overthrow President Snow.
Of course, I picked this book up immediately after reading the first but I dragged with it a bit. The impact of the first book was great because you were learning about the world that Katniss lives in and the Hunger Games themselves. With this book, however, there was a lot of “Where are they now” kind of description at the beginning. But Katniss’s life is still in turmoil and we still have to go through more pain with her.
I have not read Mockingjay yet and I’m holding off for a while. The subject matter of these books is awesome and intense and after two books in a row, I felt drained. I’ve heard plenty of reviews saying the last book isn’t as great and that Katniss isn’t the strong female heroine that we loved in the first book anymore. But I’ve also heard that people loved it, so I’ll read it soon but not just yet.

Bushnell, Candace. The Carrie Diaries. Harper Collins, New York, 2010. AISN: B005UVQE68
Our beloved Carrie Bradshaw was a girl once herself. She had best friends, gay men, unrequited love interests and a deep commitment to her writing from her teenage years.
After all the intensity of the Hunger Games books, I decided to pick something easy, fun and pink. Not having read all of the original Sex and the City novel, I can only assume that what kind of upbringing Carrie had in the television show was completely made up by HBO. While this book wasn’t jam-packed with excitement it really harkened to my love for a good, real-life first-person girl’s story. I saw Sebastian as an early Mr. Big and the betrayal by her best friend and the conflict with the over-popular bully are just hints at what Carrie will have to learn to live with in New York City.
By the way, Ms. Bushnell, awesome twist to Donna LaDonna’s secret family member. I cheered. I’m also super excited that they’re making a movie for this book now. Something else to cheer about!

Smith, L.J. The Secret Circle: The Initiation and The Captive, Part I. Harper Teen, New York, 1992. ISBN: 9780062119001
Cassie Blake and her mother move to New Salem where she meets a group of witches. She discovers that all of their families have been bonded together by the making of a new city, and the untimely deaths of their parents. Despite her acceptance into the group by Diana, the cruel Faye holds Cassie captive (hence the title) in lieu of blackmail. Cassie and Adam know they are destined to be together but the friendly and beautiful Diana already has been in love with Adam for years.
I read this book as an alternative to The Vampire Diaries popularity with the books and TV show. Unlike the Secret Circle show, the ideas that were brought forth in this first book were pulled together nicely to make a basic plot to work with for all of the episodes. I can only assume that the second book has more about the witch hunters and the other boys that Cassie has tried to be involved with but as far as the book goes, it was pretty bland.
What I did find interesting is that I felt like a teenager again as I read this because it reminded me so much of the Christopher Pike books I devoured in high school. After I just looked at the publishing date as 1992, this makes complete sense and it just goes to show that there may very well be a time for your book to hit it big – even if it takes twenty years.

Now that I’ve finished my stint of YA books, I am planning on a few classic books to get under my belt. More updates soon!

Technorati Tags: Bushnell,Meyer,Collins,Smith,Stiefvater,Breaking Dawn,Carrie Diaries,Hunger Games,Catching Fire,Secret Circle,Shiver

Review of “Eclipse”

Meyer, Stephenie. Eclipse. Little Brown, New York, 2007. ISBN: 9780316027656
Edward is now back in Bella’s life, much to her father and Jacob’s dismay.  Now Bella has to deal with a strange intruder in her room and the discord between the werewolves and the vampires.  Edward and Bella get engaged but she realizes that she loves Jacob as well.  What’s a girl to do? 
I’m starting my review of Eclipse before I finish it so I can keep tabs on the reactions I have throughout the book.  First I have a hard time with Bella.  She is in love with Edward but not for his money and beauty, as she claims, but because of him because of how caring he is.  Okay, fine.  So he never lets her out of his sight, never lets her visit Jacob, already made her father hate him for leaving her a mess, but yet she wants to become a vampire, marry him and leave everyone behind?  Rosalie already explained how awful the pain was and how much not having a normal life sucks.  And this girl is our heroine whom we want to see happy in the end?  Is what the heroine wants better than what we as the reader want though? 
Bella tells Jacob that, “I love him [Edward]. Not because he’s beautiful or because he’s rich” (110).  Oh, that’s a good one, Bella.  That’s the only reason you love him.  A couple hundred pages later she says, “I had so many more important things to think about, but his smile still knocked the breath out of me.  He was so beautiful that it made it hard sometimes to think about anything else…I was only human” (314-5).  That’s right, Bella, you’re a stupid human.
She was an emotional wreck when Edward left and Jacob was there to befriend her.  But now that Edward is back and gung-ho on this whole marriage thing, she’s mad at everyone who is standing in her way.  Oh no, my father doesn’t deserve how nice my boyfriend is to him.  Oh no, Jacob doesn’t like him and so I have to fight with him all the time.  And if I want to go see him I can’t anyway because my vampire cult soon-to-be in-laws are keeping me captive. Oh well, I’m only human.
I don’t like Bella.  I guess Meyer wants to write her abhorrence for marriage to be some testament to her problems of being a child of divorce.  But how does that work?  All she does is cook and clean for her father.  He tries to stick up for her but she’s not worried about leaving him forever as a vampire, she’s just worried about Alice being disappointed that she can’t do a wedding for her. Yes, I totally believe that this girl is this beloved that everyone would take the time to go out of their way to force her to be social.  She doesn’t do anything that gives her any personality except get depressed and ride motorcycles (hence why New Moon is the best book so far.)
I don’t like Edward.  He’s a pretty vampire.  Hooray.  He loves Bella and wants to “protect” her so he suffocates her.  She is never out of his sight or ever anywhere without his say-so.  In the real world we call this abuse.
But this is fiction and we understand that love is blind and dumb (very dumb) and things happen because of the intensity of a love relationship.  Honestly though, it didn’t need to go on this long.  Someone had said you can read the first book and the last and get the whole drift of the story.  I believe that.  This book was merely fluff.
I really don’t want to read the last book.  Eclipse was the dullest thing, albeit entertaining in a Snakes on a Plane kind of way, but still nothing happened except for some lovey drama and some dismembering towards the very end.  Wow.  I had to read through three back stories (snore) and then being told over and over that this book was based on Wuthering Heights because Lord knows I or any teenage reader would be too dumb to figure this out.  (And besides, Heathcliff had a deep, long-rooted love for Cathy that went way beyond a year of being stalked by a vampire and…you know what, never mind.)
I’ll go as far as to say that the idea is great, it just could have been done better.  And what was up with the epilogue being written in Jacob’s point of view?  Where the heck did that come from?  You have four books in a series and at the end of the third you decide to throw in a different narrator?  Meyer must have gotten as sick of Bella as we did. 
I was told that Jacob tells half of the story in the last book too.  No, just no.  I don’t want to read anything about how much he loves this little twit and how she is the “stubbornest” person in the world.  I also don’t care if Bella and Edward get married, have a wedding night, have a kid, turn into a vampire or anything.  I read other criticisms;  I know how disappointing it’s going to be even if it had a chance of being interesting. 
But, alas, I’ve made it this far.  I’ll take a hiatus and read Breaking Dawn at some point and put that under my belt of experiences.  I just don’t know when I can stomach it.  I’m afraid my own writing is going to suffer from the saturation of bad writing. (Sorry, Stephenie, I know you tried.) 

Review of “New Moon”

Meyer, Stephenie.  New Moon. Kindle. Hachette, London, 2009. ISBN: 1904233880
On Bella’s sixteenth birthday, the Cullens have thrown her a party.  Once there, she unwraps a present and cuts her finger, leaving Edward’s brother, Jasper, trying to attack her.  The Cullens decide to move and Edward tells Bella that they need to make “a clean break.”  Bella is shocked and hurt and is discovered in the woods by Sam Uley, one of Jacob Black’s friends.  For months Bella is depressed and there is no sign of Edward or his family.  Eventually Bella becomes closer to her friend Jacob Black, a match her father Charlie approves of.  Bella feels happy again with Jacob and starts riding motorcycles with him.  However, the memory of Edward lingers and each time she finds herself in the midst of danger, his voice is in her head.  Jacob suddenly stops calling her and after an incident where she had seen Laurent in the same woods where Edward had left her, she discovers that Jacob and his friends are all a pack of young werewolves.  In order to hear the “delusion” of Edward’s voice again she decides to go cliff jumping alone and nearly drowns until Jacob saves her.  In a vision Alice, Edward’s sister, comes back to see Bella only to find that she is only alive.  Edward, however, believes she is dead and goes to Italy to try and get the Volturi family to kill him.  Bella and Alice have to go and stop him where the Volturi family explain that Bella must become a vampire in order to appease them.
This book is young adult / teen romantic fantasy.  I liked this book immensely better than Twilight.  Without the blubbering over Edward, Bella had some kind of real personality.  She was heartbroken, depressed, interested in motorcycles, had new friends…she was a teenaged girl hanging out with a teenaged boy.  I liked the character of Jacob Black a lot and I hope that Meyer gives him more to do in Eclipse as well.  The detail that Bella gives Edward is just about his allure and his “perfect” insert-random-body-part-here.  The relationship with Jacob was much more enduring and much more connective.  I actually felt like Bella was a real human being.
However, it amazed me that while we were all pretty much guessing that Jacob was a werewolf in Twilight, poor Bella couldn’t figure it out even after Jacob’s persistence to remember exactly what he has told her.  (The treaty about the vampires and werewolves in Forks.)  I don’t like being two steps ahead of the narrator.  I also like the Native American legend of the werewolves too.  To me that’s very cool and it makes some kind of sense.  Native American oral legend would have tales of men turning into wolves - a creature they honour.  So Meyer did a good job on that, in my humble opinion.  I’m still not sure why they turn into wolves when they get mad instead of when the moon is full (*cough cough* Title of the novel. *cough cough*) but I can overlook that.  It’s also way more interesting to me, again, that these young wolves are just that – young.  It works well and I enjoyed the story of them.
But of course the vampires showed up again.  Now, the whole Volturi thing bugged me a bit but making them very creepy was a good way to go.  I haven’t even watched the stinking movie and I knew who Dakota Fanning’s character was the minute they described her.  The Volturi reminded me of Interview with the Vampire so it felt a little more like a traditional vampire story.  I still don’t understand how the “delusions” of hearing Edward’s voice was just the truth coming to the surface instead of some cool ability to speak to Bella when they are at such a distance (as opposed to when they’re always together.)  Seems kind of cheap to me.  And what’s with the hyphenating of words, Stephenie Meyer? “Too-big” and “too-warm” are not proper words.  Plus, everyone in this book is either chuckling or hissing.  Can’t they just talk?  Oh yeah, they’re monsters, so no?
Ultimately I do like this in some ways and in some ways I don’t.  I know Meyer said she didn’t like having to have Edward be gone for so long but I love that it gave Bella some depth and Jacob more purpose.  I don’t like that this is going to lead into “see ya, I’m off to be a bloodsucker now.”  I guess Meyer is trying to ease it more with Jacob being so angry (and potentially hurting Bella if this happens.)  But that will be for my review of Eclipse which I fumbled through the first 20% of already before writing this review.
I like that they have discussion questions in the back of the book too.  If books that are this engaging for young readers they need to know how to analyse the material in a way that they can transfer it to other school books.

Review of “Twilight”

Meyer, Stephenie. Twilight. Little, Brown Book Group, London, 2005. ISBN: 9781904233657
Isabella “Bella” Swan moves from her mother in Phoenix, AZ to live with her father in Forks, Washington.  At high school she sees the most beautiful creatures whom don’t seem that young to be 17.  Among them is Edward Cullen who doesn’t date despite his good looks and wealth that attracts attention.  Bella is scorned by Edward and is confused why he hates her so much.  When Jacob Black, a family friend tells her of the Indian legend that vampires have lived in that area, Bella begins wondering how much of the legend is true. Finally after almost being attacked by two thugs, Edward saves her and admits to Bella on the (fast) car ride home that he is what she thinks he is.  Edward and Bella get to know one another by him asking her all about her favourite things and sticking by her side day in and day out.  Eventually he shows her his true nature of sparkling in the sun as a vampiric Greek god and admits to her that she is “his type of heroine” so he loves her and wants to kill her all at the same time.  Bella meets the family, a bunch of other vampires who were turned by their father, Carslie who lived in London at the turn of the century.  During a baseball game outside, a vampire from another clan tracks Bella, convinces her to meet him alone in Phoenix in order to save her mother, and ultimately tries to kill her.  After being beaten severely, Edward’s family comes to save her and kill off the tracker vampire.  Bella sustains multiple injuries but is ultimately okay.  She wishes that Edward had turned her into a vampire too but Edward refuses.
Let me start my review by saying that like all readers picking up this book after the fact that the phenomenon that is Twilight is still in full fury, I wanted to have an open mind about this.  I tried to keep the images of the movie out of my head as I read but I did finally understand why they chose the two actors to play Bella and Edward.  Bella is boring and Edward looks bizarre in a frozen corpse kind of way.
While I give Meyer credit for creating an Indian legend that I can only assume she has fleshed out in later books because I’ve seen the Jacob character used in plenty of Twilight movie trailers and paraphernalia.  I also give her credit for creating the stories of the vampires but disregarding the other “myths” of vampires makes it feel like the author just couldn’t be bothered.  What gets me is that Meyer pretty much tells the reader how she created these characters through Bella.  Bella not only looks up vampires on Google but she reads Victorian novels that have the same romantic plots as Twilight.  Actually, with the big SAT words thrown in to show off Meyer’s English degree, it felt more of a fantasy played out on paper than a good story.  Meyer says that she dreamed up the idea of a pretty vampire in love with a mortal girl.  Her ability to run with a good idea for 434 pages is pretty good, so my hat’s off to Mrs. Meyer on that.
However, reading as a writer, the characters had nothing deep to figure out about them.  Meyer spoon feeds us every breathe, chuckle and gaze in so much dialogue that there’s nothing to try and figure out.  There is no ulterior motives, backstory or hints to how the plot will end for each character.  I can see why people like this book because they can feel as if they are Bella.  Bella has no redeeming characteristics at all.  She’s clumsy, trusting and cooks.  She never says anything witty, she doesn’t have a specific look or interests or even gives the reader any indication of why we should care about her. At least with Anne Rice’s novels, you had a story about the vampire characters and why we should care about their situation.
And the whole relationship with Edward is based on “he’s pretty, I love him.”  I’d need way more to convince me to root for a doomed relationship in a novel.  The descriptions of how perfect Edward is gets tiresome.  Is he funny?  Is he interesting?  Does he like The Beatles?  Why would she be in love with him especially when he is a murderer?  He wants to kill her yet she will leave her whole family to be with his serial killer family?  Bella is just dumb if that’s the case.
I read the book easily up until about 5 different stupid parts.  After knowing Edward could read minds, I put it down.  Dumb.  If there were scenes of him seducing people or him being able to read thoughts as a scene was taking place, that would be almost okay.  But when everything is revealed in dialogue?  Blah.  Not interesting at all.  Same goes for the baseball scene (vampires play baseball – everyone knows this), Bella needing to go home to get her things even though a tracking, stalking vampire would be following them and waiting to kill her and her father was like a Nightmare on Elm Street scene.  I’m surprised she didn’t find bodies in the kitchen, then proceed to take a shower because surely Freddy Kruger wouldn’t be still lurking around.
If the book had been written in 3rd person, which I don’t generally prefer, the whole essence of each character would be a little more empathetic.  I’ve read reviews saying that the minor characters were much more interesting than Bella and Edward.  Again, I can only assume Meyer would have delved into the material she had and created a better plot and a better catalyst for the scenes between the werewolves and other vampire clans (yes, I’ve seen the film trailer). 
All in all, this book proves that bestsellers aren’t quality books and it’s given me even more motivation to write.  J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien’s work is well written and they created a whole world of empathic characters that gives them every right to have world-round esteem.  If something like Twilight, however, can be this popular, I think any writer could take a stab at writing a young adult novel.  Heck, because of the Harlequin romance type descriptions (minus the obvious age appropriate details) we even have a “paranormal romance” genre now thanks to this novel!

Review of “Crank”

Hopkins, Ellen. Crank. First Simon Pulse, New York, 2004. ISBN: 9781416995135
Kristina Snow has found herself a new personality: Bree.  Bree does all the things Kristina would never do, including drugs.  After going away to visit her loser father, she is introduced to crank by her father’s neighbor.  Soon Kristina’s life back at home with her mother spirals out of control.  Skipping school, running away from home, being raped, getting arrested and being an all-around nightmare is all due to “the monster” of crystal meth.  Once Kristina learns she is pregnant, not by her boyfriend, but by her attacker, she decides to have the baby and clean up.
Unlike other novels in verse such as What My Mother Doesn’t Know, this book really deals with more gritty realistic issues like those of Go Ask Alice.  Like many novels now, the topic is something shocking.  However, knowing that Ellen Hopkins wrote this after dealing with her own daughter’s drug addiction, I felt more interested.  I wondered how Hopkins felt about the mother as she wrote her – does she think/know that her daughter felt the same way towards her during those times?
School Library Journal reviews this by saying, “The poems are masterpieces of word, shape, and pacing, compelling readers on to the next chapter in Kristina's spiraling world. This is a topical page-turner and a stunning portrayal of a teen's loss of direction and realistically uncertain future.”  The power of the poetry and the intense subject matter make this work very well.  What I love about these novels in verse is that you get straight to the heart of the issues and never have to wait for the author to get to the point. 
I now have the second book in the series, Glass.  I’m glad Hopkins is putting out an adult fiction novel too. I’d love to see how this style of writing can work for the genre. 

Review of “Wintergirls”

Anderson, Laurie Halse.  Wintergirls.  Viking, New York, 2009.  ISBN:  9780670011100

Lia’s best friend Cassie has just died alone in a hotel room.  Lia still doesn’t know what the cause for her death was.  What she does know is that Cassie called her 33 times the night she died.  Lia never answered.  They hadn’t been best friends anymore and now Cassie haunts Lia day and night.  They shared a pact, a competition, to become the skinniest girls in school.  Lia’s anorexia coupled with her parents’ divorce and the ghost of her ex-best friend put Lia in a strange fantasy land that only a Wintergirl can understand.

This book has a mixture of reality and fantasy.  Unlike Anderson’s Speak, this novel has much more vivid hallucinations, or, hauntings as the protagonists views them.  The same theme of a devastating circumstance is still present, however, and as in Speak, Anderson weaves the daily pain with a very traumatic event.  There’s a lot going on with this main character and you get pulled into her world.  With Lia, her troubles are more sinister and creepy.  Heck, they’re downright disturbing.  But you still want to be the reader who helps her through to the end where she can finally begin to thaw.

School Library Journal reviewed this book by stating, “As events play out, Lia's guilt, her need to be thin, and her fight for acceptance unravel in an almost poetic stream of consciousness in this startlingly crisp and pitch-perfect first-person narrative. The text is rich with words still legible but crossed out, the judicious use of italics, and tiny font-size refrains reflecting her distorted internal logic. All of the usual answers of specialized treatment centers, therapy, and monitoring of weight and food fail to prevail while Lia's cleverness holds sway. What happens to her in the end is much less the point than traveling with her on her agonizing journey of inexplicable pain and her attempt to make some sense of her life.”  I would use this book, as with Anderson’s other books, for a real-to-fiction project in a high school English class.  The students could choose Wintergirls and discuss the issues that the book address to the class as a group and/or in a visual presentation.

Review for “Lunch Lady”

Krosoczka, Jarrett J.  Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute.  Random House, New York, 2009.  ISBN: 9780375946837

The kids at school wonder what kind of life the Lunch Lady leads.  Soon after the new substitute seems a bit odd, the Lunch Lady begins her work and gets to the bottom of things.  She finds out that the odd substitute is a robot, created by the science teacher to get the kids to hate all other teachers for giving them extra robot-ordered homework.  Then the science teacher can be Teacher of the Year, or so he thinks.  The Lunch Lady and her sidekick figure out that the teacher is a robot and she fights the clan of evil robots away from the kids.  All seems well at the lunchroom again until we find that the evil cyborg substitute is at the jail, requesting new orders from the science teacher.

Vardell states that, “there needs to be a clear and consistent point of view that encourages the reader to believe in this fantasy world and engage in the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ for the length of the novel.”  This is the power of the Lunch Lady books.  These books are great graphic novels that are easy to read, full of unbelievable circumstances, but just such great fun that you don’t mind.  It really reminds me of the Captain Underpants series that my middle school students really enjoyed.

Booklist (Mar 1, 2009) reviewed this book by stating, “This tongue-in-cheek superheroine graphic novel will hit the spot for chapter-book readers. Lunch Lady and Betty, her assistant in both the cafeteria and her role of wrong-­righting supersleuth, investigate the strange case of an absent teacher, his creepy substitute, and a plan to grab the Teacher of the Year Award by truly foul means. Three little kids join in the action as Lunch Lady, equipped with a variety of high-tech kitchen gadgets like a spatu-copter and a lunch-tray laptop, tracks a cleverly disguised robot to his maker's lab, where a whole army of cyborgs require kicking, stomping, and the wielding of fish-stick nunchucks. Yellow-highlighted pen-and-ink cartoons are as energetic and smile-provoking as Lunch Lady's epithets of Cauliflower! and Betty's ultimate weapon, the hairnet. There is a nice twist in the surprise ending, and the kids' ability to stand up to the school bully shows off their newfound confidence in a credible manner. Little details invite and reward repeat readings with visual as well as verbal punning.” 

I agree that there is so much subtle detail in the pictures, the way the graphics are arranged, the little play on words here and there and, the movement of the story.  It works so well as a comic book style tale of a superhero.  This is just such a nice way to put the situation into a school with fantastical scenes that I think a lot of young readers, male or female, will really enjoy these.  I would suggest keeping such graphic novels available in my classroom or school library.  For those who are reluctant readers, this has the basic elements of character, plot, setting, theme and style so any kind of book report or presentation would be done well by using a Lunch Lady book.