The Shadow Hero

by Gene Luen Yang, illustrated by Sonny Liew

Hank Chu goes about his life, like most young men in Chinatown.  He spends his days working in his family's store and his spare time playing mahjong with his father and his father's friends.  It's a quiet life, and Hank enjoys it very much.  His world turns a little upside down when his mother is rescued during a bank robbery by a superhero, The Anchor of Justice.  Mrs. Chu throws herself into turning Hank into a homegrown superhero, subjecting him to everything from odd medicines to toxic sludge; sewing a costume; and driving him around Chinatown at night to try and find crimes in progress.  Let's just say it doesn't go well.  Hank is initially resistant to his mother's actions, but when his father is killed, all bets are off, and Hank is out to avenge his father's killer, with a little help from the Turtle, one of the guardian spirits of China.

The Shadow Hero is an origin story for a short-lived superhero comic series from the 1930s written by Chu Hing, called the Green Turtle, who is said to have been the first Asian superhero.  It uses a lot of the stereotypical superhero tropes (parent violently dying, secret identity, teenaged protagonist), but adroitly avoids some of the others, like women in distress or the protagonist having lots of nifty tools and toys. Hank also lacks the seemingly bottomless bank account that goes with the supply of cool toys.  (Yeah, I'm looking at you, Batman and Iron Man!)  Hank manages to fight crimes based on his own wits, strength, and intelligence, which makes a refreshing change from otherwordly powers and gadgets.  Another thing I really liked was that Hank never contemplates killing his enemies and tries to avoid violence at all if he can.

Yang writes wonderfully complex characters.  The character that leads a quiet life turns out to have been a troublemaker in his younger days.  Do stereotypes exist in his comics?  Yes, but they don't stay stereotypes for long.  Circumstances change his characters, sometimes for better, sometimes not.  But nobody stays static in Yang's world for very long.

Sonny Liew's drawings evoke vintage comic books, and he does a great job differentiating between events in the past and present. He even uses the classic comic elements of onomatopoeic sound effects ("bang," "pow," etc.).  He manages to draw the characters so that they are readily distinct from one another.


Gene Luen Yang is the award-winning author of American Born Chinese, Boxers & Saints, and Level Up.  He also wrote several Avatar: The Last Airbender comics. 

Noggin

Noggin

 

By John Corey Whaley

Imagine if you had a terminal illness.  You knew you were going to die but doctors offered you a way out – sort of.  What if they offered to cut off your head, freeze it, and reattach it to someone else’s healthy body as soon as the technology became available?  

This is exactly what happens to 16-year-old Travis Coates who is dying of cancer.  Travis’ family agrees to the offer, but believes it will be decades at the very least before Travis is brought back to life.  However, only 5 years later, technology has advanced and Travis is back!

Sounds like a happy ending, right?  But when 16-year-old Travis comes back (in a taller, fitter, skateboarder’s body no less), his best friend Kyle and girlfriend Cate are 21 years old and have moved on with their lives.  Neither of them wanted Travis to die; they would have done anything in their power to stop it.  But they don’t know what to do now that he’s back. Having Travis come back from the dead turns their lives upside down.

As you can imagine, Travis is an overnight media sensation.  But he just wants to be a normal 16-year-old kid again – with the same best friend and girlfriend.  

At school Travis meets Hatton, who initially calls him Noggin.  Hatton is funny and friendly, and he’s not afraid to poke a little fun at his new friend Travis who has “a good head on his shoulders.”

Although the premise of this novel is fairly absurd, Noggin is really a book about identity and relationships.  What makes us who we are?  What connects us to our friends?  In real life, things change.  Best friends and girlfriends may only be temporary.  All of us have to deal with these issues – but most of us don’t have to deal with coming back from the dead.

Book of the Month - July: Every Exquisite Thing

by Matthew Quick

Every Exquisite Thing, about a girl named Nanette O'Hare who grows from popular star athlete into literature-obsessed non-conformist, is an unexpectedly delightful coming-of-age story. Throughout, the story makes a number of unexpected but still believable turns, and in the end Nanette's journey felt genuine and the twists unforced.

Nanette is eighteen, doing well in school and socially, but entirely unhappy. She tends to avoid the high school lunchroom by hiding out with her favourite teacher, Mr. Graves, and discussing books. One day Mr. Graves lends her his favourite novel, a cult classic about high school rebellion and boredom. Blown away, it makes Nanette begin to see the whole world differently. He also introduces her to its writer, an elderly man named Booker. This burgeoning friendship changes Nanette's life- allowing her to meet other misfits and giving her the independence to contemplate other futures than what she'd previously accepted blindly. The book doesn't shy away from issues such as depression, grief, bullying and loneliness- but it is respectful in its treatment of Nanette and it even manages to experiment with form for a bit at the end in a way that exhilarates the final half of the story.

Quick has a way with words, and the novel's wit brings a brightness to the proceedings even when dealing with darker issues. Whether you are a misfit, a book-lover or just a fan of great storytelling, I recommend this book very highly.

Paper Towns

Paper Towns by John Green

A paper town is a fictional town that mapmakers place on thier maps to prevent copyright infringement. If the paper town shows up on another map, the original makers know it is an illegal copy of their map.

This novel uses paper towns in a set of clues that Margo Roth Speigelman leaves for her neighbour, Quentin Jacobsen on the day she disappears. Margo disappears the morning after she ropes Quentin into her plans for revenge on a group of friends who have betrayed her. Quentin goes along with the pranks as he is just glad to be part of Margo's life again, having been smitten with her since their childhood.

Margo's disappearance leaves questions for Quentin, and to some extent, their classmates.As the teens follow the clues, and varying interpretations of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass,  to find Margo, they are making assumptions about who she was, each of them seeing her in a different way, each having had a different relationship with her. The story is told mostly from inside Quentin's head, as he is the most obsessive of Margo and her disappearance. It becomes an all encompassing quest for him to locate this girl he holds on a pedestal.  Such is his desire to locate the Margo he thinks he knows, that he makes some un-Quentin like decisions to accomplish this, showing the story is more about Quentin finding himself, than him finding Margo.

I found the ending somewhat disappointing, a let down after all the hype about finding this mysterious girl, but still a good story, in which you are cheering the characters on.

More teen fiction by John Green includes: The Fault in our Stars, Looking for Alaska, and An Abundance of Katherines.

The Kiss of Deception

by Mary E. Pearson

The rebellious princess runs away from an arranged marriage because she wants to experience normal life. That cliche was enough of a deterrent that The Kiss of Deception was on my shelf for a year before I tried reading it. But honestly, it was actually pretty entertaining.

Together with her handmaiden, Princess Lia of Morrighan runs away on her wedding day and settles down to work in a bar in a small village. She's followed by two men: Prince Rafe of Dalbreck, who she left at the altar; and Kaden, an assassin from Venda sent to stop the alliance between the cities of Morrighan and Dalbreck. Rafe and Kaden end up befriending Lia and, well, a love triangle happens. If you loathe love triangles, run away now!  

The chapters rotate between each character's point-of-view (POV). To make things more mysterious, "The Prince's" and "The Assassin's" POVs are featured, in addition to Rafe's and Kaden's (although it's a no brainer as to who's who). It was a really quick read for me as both the writing and the plot weren't that complex. If you're able to make it through the first book, where Lia spends the majority of her time as a bar maid, the second book is where the actual adventure begins.

The Kiss of Deception and The Heart of Betrayal are available as eBooks on Overdrive.

The Firebug of Balrog County

The Firebug of Balrog County

By David Oppegaard

Mack Druneswald is a high school senior living in Balrog County.  (Mack has named it Balrog County after the fiery monster in Lord of the Rings.  Its real name is something as boring as the place itself.)

But Mack has more to contend with than boredom.  His mother has passed away, leaving him lonely and vulnerable.  What’s a well-read geek to do but start setting fires?

Arson becomes Mack’s drug of choice.  As his internal “firebug” encourages his antics, Mack increasingly requires bigger and more daring fires to satisfy his need.

When Mack meets Katrina, a college girl who is attracted to his geeky intelligent self as well as his secret identity as a pyromaniac, Mack becomes more audacious and longs to set fire to the town’s Halloween Haunted Castle.

Although Mack’s exploits are often clever and amusing, there is nothing funny about the loss of his mother.  The reminiscences about Mack’s mother are heartfelt and emotional.  This book will make you cry and laugh out loud, all the while rooting for a kid that sets fires all over town.

Book of the Month - June - Front Lines

By Michael Grant

In this alternate history set during World War II, a court decision makes women subject to the draft and eligible for service.  Not just desk jobs, either – they’re going to be on the front lines. This doesn’t mean that everyone is thrilled with the idea, though – there’s still a huge amount of sexism among the general public, and among the troops as well.

Front Lines is told from the viewpoints of three female characters: Rio Richlin is a white teen from a small town in Northern California.  Frangie Marr is a black teen from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Rainy Schulterman is a Jewish teen from New York City.  Each of the three has their own reasons for enlisting in the army, and the book follows them from their days State-side before enlisting, all the way through to the battle of Kasserine Pass in Tunisia.  

Very readable, at times heartbreaking, this is a powerful story of war, and also a commentary on gender expectations and race issues during the early 1940s.  At first glance it seems like a long book – it is 548 pages, after all – but it’s a quick read, and you’ll find yourself turning the pages to see what happens next.  One thing to note, though, there is some language used that may be offensive to some readers – racial slurs and derogatory language towards women.      

Other books like Front Lines: Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys