Alma Rose--Edith Forbes

I want to encourage attention for this novel. It was published 15 years ago but it's a great story and worth checking out at the library.

Pat Lloyd is Kilgore's town oddball. She's intelligent and self-educated, and interested in a thousand things outside her small Western town. Despite that she still lives with her widowed dad, works in his store and keeps her inner self alive through regular shipments of mail order books. She spends a lot of time training her dogs and sketching on property she owns outside town, and while she's lonely, it's such a habit that she's accepted it.

This changes when Alma Rose starts coming in to town regularly when her trucking route changes. She's a feminine and flirtatious lady truck driver, befriending Pat and opening her eyes to the loneliness of her life and her place within the network of Kilgore. Through her relationship with Alma Rose, Pat begins to understand and value herself. And when their relationship ends, she embarks on a monumental project inspired by Alma Rose made possible only by her own oddities and gifts.

All of this is interesting of course, blah blah personal awakenings, yea! lesbians, yea! But Forbes is working a particular set of themes that I wrestle with in real life that that isn't often explored in fiction--What's a successful relationship? Can something good still come from betrayal? Where's the dividing line between crazy from love and just crazy? If cutting yourself off from others is protective, how do you deal with the aftermath when you open up? And how can you break yourself from the habit of cutting yourself off from others?

The author's website is here. She's written other novels that sound really interesting and look like they continue to explore these themes. I'm putting them on my reading list.

500 Great Books By Women--Erica Bauermeister, Jesse Larsen and Holly Smith

Published in 1994, this book is a great reader's advisory tool. It consists of short summaries of notable fiction and nonfiction by female authors, arranged by themes. The themes include Art, Growing Up, Violence, Power, Work and others. The best thing about this book is that it truly succeeds in bringing in non-Western writers and writers not of the current or modern period and the book descriptions are well-written and appeal to the adventuresome reader.

Definitely a book to keep an eye out for if you do reader's advisory or want to come up with a theme list, or if you are looking for good reads for yourself. It's still in print and available new or used online, and also available in at least 1 Clevnet library.

Re-Gifters--Mike Carey, Sonny Liew & Marc Hempel

This offering from the DC Comics Minx line is much, much better than the The PLAIN Janes. Matter of fact, I wish I'd had this graphic novel available last week when I had a request for romantic stories, "not racy!" and suitable for a 12 year old girl. I'd of handed this over with joy, for it's such a good story.

Dik Seong Jen aka Jen Dickson aka Dixie is a Korean American teen living in South Central L.A. Her life is pretty normal--a mom, a dad, little twin brothers, a best friend, school, hapkido practice, and a crush. A huge crush that's distubing her life, especially her hapkido studies, for her crush is one Adam Heller, blond god and fellow hapkido student. Dixie's a great character--she's smart, devoted and funny but has a terrible temper and can be rash. She's got a good heart though--a fierce warrior of a girl for the modern age.

So in order to declare herself to Adam, Dixie will not only wear makeup and a short skirt to his birthday party, but she will give him an awesome present. A large heavy statue of Hwarang warrior, the purchase of which takes all her savings and the money her dad gives her to enter the hapkido tournament. It's a beautiful statue that reminds her of him and of course he will recognize that they are similar souls.

No, he doesn't get it. Adam actually regifts the statue to his own crush, who doesn't understand the meaning either.

How that statue makes its way back to Dixie, and how she gets to compete in the hapkido tournament fills the rest of the tale, with help coming from unexpected sources.

The art does a great job of conveying the story--lots of small panels and thick lines that show emotion and immediacy. The characters are easily distinguishable, and Liew and Hempel do a great job of depicting their personalities through their drawn figures.

I also love the writing. It's brisk and the story unrolls at a fast pace, but character development is nicely balanced. Carey has a good ear for teen girl dialogue and puts a lot of poetry into Dixie's narration. One of my favorite bits: "I'm not all that good at shop. I've got enthusiasm but no discrimination, Mr. Callender says. But that day I was worse than usual. I kept thinking Adam thoughts. They made me want to sing and cry at the same time. But you can't do either of those in shop." (32) There's nice description and explanation of Korean culture, hapkido and life in Dixie's neighborhood.

Read alikes for this would be author Joan Bauer, who writes about teenage girls with personal passions who are trying to figure out the world, and the great book Beetle and Me: A Love Story, about a girl fixing up her dream car, the VW Beetle of her childhood. I'm also reminded of Arsenal from Hopeless Savages , another girl martial artist with strong emotions. This would also be a good choice for a parent-daughter reading project/club/share, because there's a lot to talk about and examine and the story has positive family dynamics and themes.