Today’s Booking through Thursday question was pretty easy:

Quick–what are you reading right now? Would you recommend it? What’s it about?

The book in my bag, which gets the most attention, is The Borrower, by Rebecca Makkai, which I picked up at the Politics & Prose membership sale a couple of weeks ago. It’s about a children’s librarian and her interactions with a charming 12-year-old boy (whom everyone assumes is gay) being raised by a fundamentalist mother who has a whole list of things she doesn’t want her son reading. It’s custom-made for a leftie book-lover like me.

The book I’m reading at home, because it’s awkward to carry around is Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. I got a late start on the Book Riot readalong, but it’s been in my to-be-read pile for a while (thanks again, Jenn!), so I am keeping on keeping on. Also, the first few chapters kind of read like an episode of Inspector Lewis, except told by the entitled college kids who murder one of their own. (I suppose it’s too much to hope for a dishy police sergeant to appear somewhere in its pages…) It’s dense, but I’m liking it so far.

How about you? What are you reading right now?

On Monday, the judges were announced, and I can now tell you that I’ve been selected to be one! I can’t begin to explain how excited I am about this. But let’s say it’s like Christmas morning when you’re standing in front of all your wrapped presents.

I am serving on the young adult fiction panel* (my first choice!), which includes all fiction aimed at older teens except for fantasy and science fiction. That has its own panel.

I’ll be reading the first round nominees (the longlist, if you will), which come from the public starting Oct. 1. (Don’t worry. I’ll remind you.) The chair estimates we’ll each have to tackle 75 books in the next three months, so I’m hoping no one was looking forward to homemade Christmas presents this year. By the end, we’ll have winnowed 200ish books down to a short list (countable on two hands), which we’ll exhaustedly hand off to the second round panel.

I’m particularly excited because the group of people I am working with seem really nice and knowledgeable, and their blogs offer a wide variety of book reviews to peruse. I was aware of several of them, but most are new to me.

These are the folks I’ll be reading with directly:

And these are the people who determine the ultimate winner:

Without a doubt you will hear more about the Cybils in the weeks to come. I can’t wait!

*I know the Cybils site uses my real name, but let’s not go spreading it around, okay? Sprite I have been, and Sprite I remain.

Liesl & Po by Lauren Oliver

From the jacket: “Liesl lives in a tiny attic bedroom, locked away by her cruel stepmother. Her only friends are the shadows and the mice — until one night a ghost appears from the darkness. It is Po, who comes from the Other Side. Both Liesl and Po are lonely, but together they are less alone. That same night, an alchemist’s apprentice, Will, bungles an important delivery…. Will’s mistake has tremendous consequences for Liesl and Po, and it draws the three of them together on an extraordinary journey.”

My take: A charmingly well-told tale of a little orphan girl who has been locked in the attic by her evil stepmother. Visited suddenly one night by two ghosts — a child, Po, and its companion cat/dog named Bundle — Liesl exchanges a drawing for Po’s seeking out her recently deceased father on the Other Side. When it (Po is genderless, for such things are unimportant on the Other Side) returns with a message, Liesl must make the decision to escape the safety of the known misery that is her attic room and voyage forth into a dark and dreary world (the sun hasn’t shone for nearly five years) to complete her father’s last wish.

Will, lonely apprentice to the city alchemist, is often sent out on late-night errands by his master. While out, he makes a point to stop outside Liesl’s window to watch her draw, feeling in some way that she might be as lonely as he is. When his pause outside her house one night causes Will to reorganize his errands to the mortician and city’s Lady Premiere, he sets in motion a chain of events that will change all of their lives forever.

This middle grade fantasy novel was a joy to read from start to end. Death is anything but friendless here. I love that Po is gender neutral and that Bundle is species neutral. I love that ghosts are grumpy about the reputation they have in the human world for hauntings, and that Po is quick to learn manners, but then cannot understand when Liesl thoughtlessly abandons them. The language cavorts past your eyes, turning little somersaults just for the pleasure of being used:

“The boy seemed to drag, inch, ooze along like a giant slug.” (52)

or

“[Liesl] repeated the word ineffable clearly, three times in her head, lingering over the gentle slope of the double fs, like the soft peaks of the whipped cream she remembered from her early childhood, and this made her feel slightly better.” (44)

If there is one flaw to the book, and it is a minor one in my opinion, we don’t fully understand (although neither does it) what causes Po to show up in the first place. It just appears all of a sudden and demands to know why Liesl has given up her art.

Highly recommended for everyone. Particularly appropriate for middle grade readers, particularly those who might not be ready for some of the darker regions that fantasy novels aimed a few years older start moving toward. An ideal read for those who will be ready in a few years for The Graveyard Book or The Book Thief.

Pages: 307

Liar & Spy, by Rebecca Stead

From the jacket: “When seventh grader Georges (the S is silent) moves into a Brooklyn apartment building, he meets Safer, a twelve-year-old coffee-drinking loner and self-appointed spy. Georges is happy to hang out with Safer’s warm, eccentric family, because lately things haven’t been so easy at home: his dad lost his job, and his mom has started working extra shifts at the hospital. Life is no better at school, where Georges is the new target of Dallas, who is always on the lookout for other kids’ weak spots (so he knows exactly where to hit them).”

My take: Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me was my favorite book of 2010. I didn’t read her sophomore effort, First Light, but I was eager to read her new middle grade novel, Liar & Spy, and managed to pick it up from the library within weeks of its publication date.

Liar & Spy is set in modern-day Brooklyn, where Georges and his parents have just moved into a new apartment after being forced to sell their home when Georges’ father is downsized. While his mother works double shifts at the hospital to make rent (checking in via cell phone calls and Scrabble tile messages left after he’s in bed), Georges must contend with a bully in his seventh-grade class, not worrying his already stressed out dad, and making friends in his new building.

The last is courtesy of a small note he and his father discover in the laundry room on move-in day advertising a spy club. He is met by the sweets-obsessed Candy, who has been scoping him out for her older brother, Safer, a home-schooled boy his own age who has a job exercising the building dogs. Safer also has an interest in keeping an eye on fellow tenant Mr. X, who always dresses in black and who, Safer says, is often seen removing heavy suitcases from the premises.

As things heat up at school and as Safer begins taking their surveillance a step further, Georges must learn, like his namesake Seurat’s paintings, how much weight to put on the small details to balance out the big picture in order to find your own personal truth.

Stead gets middle-schoolers — their interactions, their thoughts, and their fears. Georges is a real kid in a real place facing real problems, just at that tipping point between handling them as a child and handling them as an adult. Safer and his family are quirky but welcoming, helping Georges make the adjustment to a new environment smoother — and far more interesting — than it might otherwise have been.

If I did not love Liar & Spy in the same way I adored When You Reach Me, it is not to say that this latest novel is lacking in some way. In fact, for a book that clocks in under 200 pages, it fits in an awful lot (including several surprising plot twists) in a very thorough fashion. It is just that Stead’s first novel was so perfect that even a very good follow-up might seem a little pale in comparison.

Liar & Spy would make a good read for the sort of kid who likes a little mystery in their reading, but who doesn’t require a lot of flash. Those who like Jerry Spinnelli’s work, for instance, will be quite at home here. And readers who will one day love Sarah Dessen, David Leviathan, and John Green, but who aren’t yet ready for their more mature themes, will find kindred spirits in these pages. There’s no high-tech wizardry at work in this novel … just a reliance on quality storytelling.

Pages: 180

I last did this meme more than a year ago, which I think makes it eligible to be re-used at this time:

The Book(s) I Am Currently Reading
I started The Age of Miracles, a recently published dystopian coming-of-age novel by Karen Thompson Walker, this morning. I began A.A. Milne’s classic, Winnie-the-Pooh, over the weekend and am reading it slowly, a chapter a night before bed. And, finally, I’ve been plodding through Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s Encyclopedia of Life a few pages a time over the course of the last few months.

The Book I Finished Last
Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt. Review to follow, hopefully tomorrow.

The Next Book I Want to Read
Rebecca Stead’s new book, Liar & Spy.

The Last Book I Bought
I feel like there should be something more recent, but it seems like The Enchantress might be the last book I purchased.

The Last Book I Was Given
Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant — a belated and much appreciated Christmas present from Sam.

Feel free to share your own answers in the comments.

Madhattan Mystery, by John J. Bonk

From the jacket: “While their father honeymoons with his new wife, Lexi McGill and her younger brother, Kevin, are spending their summer in New York City with their actress aunt. Fitting into the hustle and bustle of city life is tough enough for these small-town kids, but when Lexi overhears a secret plot to hide Cleopatra’s famous jewels after they’re stolen from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, their low-key summer turns into a high-stakes adventure.”

My take: Twelve-year-old Lexi and her nine-year-old brother, Kevin, have come to New York City to stay with Aunt Roz, an actress, and attend an urban summer camp. Shortly after arriving at Grand Central Station, Lexi overhears two men planning what sounds like a jewel heist. Although Lexi puts the conversation out of her mind for a while, when a newspaper article reports that gems purportedly belonging to Cleopatra have been stolen from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she wonders if she really did hear the thieves.

Kim Ling Levine, an aspiring investigative journalist whose parents own the building where Aunt Roz lives in, takes the McGill kids under her wing. When camp ends early on the first day and when Lexi discovers her wallet is missing, Kim introduces them to the city where she has grown up. And when she learns that Lexi may have discovered a clue to the whereabouts of the missing jewels, she kick-starts an adventure that promises the summer will be extraordinary.

There are a couple things I really liked about this story. First, as with many New York-based books, the city stands on its own. Bonk frames the mystery of the book around the Whispering Gallery of Grand Central Station (which I’d never heard of, but which you can bet I’ll be trying the next time I’m there), but offers us additional glimpses of the train station, Central Park, Carnegie Hall, the Met, and general ambiance of a very alive location and the assortment of characters you’ll find there. Second, he gives us a modern novel that makes good use of current technology. Kevin is regularly texting on his smart phone, conversing with a friend. They do research via computer. Bonk makes use of technology well in a genre that tends to have a hard time figuring out how to do that. Finally, Lexi is a complicated character. She’s recently lost her mother and is having a tough time dealing with her father’s remarriage. But while only time can heal such wounds, a really big adventure in a really big city can do wonders for helping you along the path.

Definitely an enjoyable read for the elementary school set.

Pages: 292