Smile and Sisters by Raina Telgemeier

Smile and Sisters by Raina Telgemeier are two graphic memoirs about the author's teen years.

In Smile, middle-schooler Raina is not looking forward to getting braces, but the process is complicated by a painful accident that results in the loss of her front teeth just days before the braces are scheduled to go on. Will her missing teeth and metallic grin spell social disaster?

Sisters focuses on the relationship between Raina and her younger sister, particularly on one long road trip that the girls take with their mother and younger brother. They're on their way to a family reunion, but in many ways these two sisters have never felt further apart. Will their adventures on the road help them learn how to be better sisters to each other?

Both of these books have been popular at my library lately, and I can see how they would appeal to readers, especially those in similar circumstances. I liked Smile slightly better than Sisters, which I felt was a little inconclusive about certain points at the ending, but both were fun, quick reads. I'd better get them back to the library now, as they are in demand!

(Reviewed from copies borrowed through my library system.)

We Should Hang Out Sometime by Josh Sundquist

We Should Hang Out Sometime: Embarrassingly, A True Story by Josh Sundquist is a cute, funny memoir of one man's dating life, or lack thereof.

As an adolescent and teen, Josh was always a little bit geeky and awkward, which might explain why he only had one girlfriend (in eighth grade, for 23 hours). At the ripe old age of 25, he looks back on his romantic misadventures in middle school, high school, and college, wondering where, exactly, he went wrong. Being of a mathematical and scientific bent, he forms a hypothesis about each of his crushes, then attempts to contact the girl to see if his hypothesis is correct. In many cases, what he learns surprises him.

This book was a lot of fun to read, though it did sometimes evoke that squirmy embarrassed feeling you get when you're reading about a person about to do something potentially humiliating, and you (the reader) are powerless to stop them. Josh's experiences rang true for me, since I have also experienced a certain amount of failure in the romantic realm. It's always nice to know you're not alone! I did wish for a little more explanation or closure in some cases, but I realize that's not always possible in real life. I though Josh's conclusion about why things went down the way they did was accurate, and something that I should remind myself of occasionally. All in all, a highly enjoyable light read.

(Reviewed from a copy borrowed through my library system.)

Popular by Maya Van Wagenen

Popular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek by Maya Van Wagenen is a teen memoir with a fun twist.

When Maya Van Wagenen discovers a 1950's teen popularity guide while helping organize her father's office, she just thinks of it as a weird curiosity -- until her mother suggests that she take the guide's advice for her eighth grade school year and document the consequences. Though she initially balks at the idea, she finds she can't get it out of her head, and so she embarks on a quest for the 1950's teen ideal. She starts with the easiest chapters and works her way up to the more challenging ones. Along the way, of course, she learns a lot of interesting stuff about popularity, her fellow students, and herself.

I read this all in one evening -- I definitely found it a fun, engaging read. It would pair well with Going Vintage by Lindsey Leavitt, a novel with a similar premise. I'd recommend this to readers who enjoy memoirs and high school stories.

(Reviewed from a finished copy, courtesy of the publisher and YALSA.)

El Deafo by Cece Bell

El Deafo by Cece Bell is a graphic memoir for middle-grade readers, or anyone who enjoys a good memoir in an unusual format.

A bout with meningitis at the age of four left Cece with severe hearing loss. This makes navigating school a little rough, especially since she has to wear the Phonic Ear, a large hearing aid that straps onto her chest and communicates with a microphone worn by her teachers. Cece soon learns that this device gives her special powers, practically superpowers: she can hear what the teacher is saying in the classroom, out in the hallway, in the staff room . . . even in the bathroom! Will she use her powers for good? Can they help her get the attention of the boy she has a crush on?

This is an impressive memoir: it does a great job of showing the reader what it was like for Cece to grow up with a hearing impairment, it touches on universal childhood concerns like making friends, dealing with siblings, and having a first crush, and it's entertaining. I feel like I learned a lot from Cece's experiences, and I will certainly recommend it to both kids and adults.

(Reviewed from a copy borrowed through my library system.)

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson is a memoir in verse from a gifted author.

In spare and lovely free verse poems, Woodson describes her early life. Born in Ohio, she moved with her mother and siblings to South Carolina at a young age, then to New York a few years later. Woodson describes how she learned to tell stories, while also exploring the era in which she grew up and the experiences -- some happy, some sad -- that she shared with her close-knit family.

This is a National Book Award finalist, and a book that's been getting a lot of Newbery buzz. I liked it a lot, and can certainly see its distinguished qualities. I tend to want memoirs to be more like novels (real life has a distressing lack of plot, have you noticed?), but Woodson does a good job of tying her life story together in a cohesive way. Whether it scoops a lot of big awards or not, I think this is an important book, and I'd recommend it to memoir readers and kid lit aficionados.

(Reviewed from a copy borrowed through my library system.)

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

I listened to the audiobook of Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling. This audiobook was read by the author, which was, in this case, a good thing.

The author of this memoir is a staff writer and actress on the American version of The Office. I've seen maybe two episodes of the show, so pretty much any time she referenced things that happened on the show, or other actors from the show, I was in the dark. That was fine; there was a lot to enjoy in this audiobook even for people who, like me, are unfamiliar with The Office and Kaling's career in general. In the book, Kaling reminisces on her childhood, college days, and her rise from complete obscurity to her current position. As you'd expect from a sitcom writer, her observations are made with a great deal of humor. Interspersed with the personal history are essays and "listy-things" featuring Kaling's opinions on a wide variety of subjects. The content is generally lighthearted.

I was surprised how often I agreed with Kaling. Her views on marriage, for instance, struck a chord with me. And while Kaling is what I describe as "Hollywood fat" (meaning, possessing a body much thinner than that of the average American woman, but slightly larger than the typical Hollywood stick figure), her struggles with finding clothing that fits and flatters also resonated. On the other hand, when she talked about comedy, she lost me fairly quickly. I do have a sense of humor (I think...), but I don't always have the greatest appreciation for the kind of funny that's popular on mainstream TV.

There are a few drawbacks to listening to this, rather than reading it. For one thing, you miss out on any photos and illustrations. For another, I occasionally had a hard time figuring out when one essay ended and another began. Things that are immediately obvious in a book's formatting are less so when they're being read aloud. Was that line the title of a new essay, or another bullet point in the current one? I also felt that the reading pace was rushed at the beginning, but I quickly got used to it. I'd recommend this book in either format, with the caveat that audiobook listeners may want to briefly obtain a paper copy later to check on what they might have missed.

(Reviewed from an audiobook borrowed through my library system.)

Homesick: My Own Story by Jean Fritz

Homesick: My Own Story by Jean Fritz is the story of a young American growing up in China. At the age of 11, Jean has never set foot on American soil, but she dreams of the day when she will get to experience typical American childhood events: feeding chickens at her grandmother's farm, roller-skating, saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school. On the other hand, she loves her life in China, too. This fictionalized memoir is a lovely description of a young girl who is, in many ways, torn between two countries. Fritz obviously remembers vividly what it is to be a child -- young Jean struggles with her parents' expectations that she be a "good" girl. "Sometimes, I don't even try [to be good]," she admits in a letter to her grandmother.

When a friend passed this book along to me, I thought that I had never read it -- but as I read, I found that certain mental images echoed back from my childhood: the junks on the Yangtze, the chef with his long fingernails and his elaborate butter pagodas, the little boy who calls Jean a "foreign devil" and with whom she shares an orange. I must have read this at some point in the deep and dusty past. While the descriptions of Fritz's China are, by now, somewhat dated, her descriptions of her childhood feelings are timeless.

(Reviewed from a secondhand copy given to me by a friend.)

Drawing from Memory by Allen Say

My last read reminded me that I had a copy of Drawing from Memory by Allen Say that I needed to read. This graphic novel memoir tells the story of how Say grew up to be an artist, something some members of his family may have had a hard time accepting. As an adolescent boy, Say's family sent him to live on his own in the big city while he attended school. During his time there, before immigrating to America with his father and stepmother, Say apprenticed himself to a cartoonist he very much admired. Say writes and draws about the people who were important in his life as he was first working on developing his craft.

I enjoyed this little book more than I thought I would -- it was a fascinating picture of the life of a student/artist in Tokyo in the late 1940s and early 1950s. My copy is actually a galley, sent to me by a friend who got to meet Say in person -- so my galley is signed, with a little sketch by the author:

The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure

The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie by Wendy McClure is a memoir that was right up my alley. As a child, McClure was fascinated with the Little House series. She grew out of the obsession, but when she rediscovered her childhood copy of Little House in the Big Woods, she also rediscovered the old fascination. Now, as a grown woman, Wendy does what she wasn't able to do as a child: she travels, researches, and experiments with the life so vividly described by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Over the course of about a year, McClure travels to each of the major Laura Ingalls Wilder home sites. Along the way, McClure makes some startling discoveries about the Wilder family, the history surrounding the Little House books, and, of course, herself.

I also loved the Little House books as a child, though they were not my only favorites. Perhaps the reason I never obsessed over the prairie lifestyle was that, back when I first read the books, my family was living at our own Little House on the Prairie, just outside of Perry, Oklahoma -- part of Oklahoma's Cherokee Strip (or, more correctly, Cherokee Outlet) region. (Laura Ingalls Wilder actually lived in a different Indian Territory, about 140 miles away in Kansas, but I didn't know that at the time. Even she thought that her family had lived in northern Oklahoma, rather than southern Kansas.) We weren't farmers, but we did have a big garden, some fruit trees, and a couple dozen chickens. I never churned butter, but I collected eggs from the chicken coop and made applesauce with apples from our own trees. The farm was surrounded on two sides by cattle, and on the other two sides by winter wheat. (Surprisingly, in the four years that we lived there, I don't remember any hailstorms, wildfires, or plagues of grasshoppers taking out the wheat crop . . . but then again, the wheat didn't belong to my family -- or Laura's -- so maybe that's the key.) So, though Laura and I were separated by about 100 years, I think I got my fill of the homesteading life growing up.

Wendy McClure, on the other hand, went searching or her own homesteading experience, with mixed (and sometimes hilarious) results. It was interesting to compare her opinion of the books with mine -- for instance, she mentions early on that On the Banks of Plum Creek was one of her favorite books in the series, whereas it was one of my least favorite. She relegates Farmer Boy to the status of an add-on, while it's one of the ones I remember most clearly. On the other hand, both of our childhood selves were dismayed and confused at the transition from the rosy conclusion of These Happy Golden Years to the bleak, disaster-filled, and brusquely-written pages of The First Four Years.

I've never felt the need to research the lives of the Ingalls and Wilder families, but McClure's findings were fascinating and enlightening. In short, I'd recommend this book to anyone who loved the Little House series as a child. Reading the Little House series beforehand would probably enrich the experience of reading The Wilder Life, but it can be enjoyed even if your recollections of Laura's adventures are a bit hazy.

(Reviewed from a copy borrowed through my library system.)