How To Save a Life by Sara Zarr

From the jacket: “Jill MacSweeney just wishes everything could go back to normal. But ever since her dad died, she’s been isolating herself from her boyfriend, her best friends — everyone who wants to support her. And when her mom decides to adopt a baby, it feels like she’s somehow trying to replace a lost family member with a new one. Mandy Kalinowsky understands what it’s like to grow up unwanted — to be raised by a mother who never intended to have a child. So when Mandy becomes pregnant, one thing she’s sure of is that she wants a better life for her baby. It’s harder to be sure of herself. Will she ever find someone to care for her, too?”

My take: Mandy is pregnant and looking to give her child up for adoption. Jill’s recently widowed mom, Robin, is looking to adopt a baby, and an open-adoption website helps them find each other. Robin invites Mandy to move in with them while they wait for the baby’s arrival — two decisions that cause Jill, still reeling from her dad’s death, to flip out.

It’s like her mother has become someone Jill doesn’t even recognize. Jill has enough to worry about without a pregnant stranger living in her house and without her mother making what seems like a sudden and insane life decision: Jill’s about to graduate from high school, but while she knows she doesn’t want to head to college right away, she’s not sure what she does want to do.

She suspects, though, that at least the short term answer may involve a boy — either her reliable on-again, off-again boyfriend Dylan or Ravi, the sympathetic anti-fraud manager who works in the corporate office of her after-school bookstore job and who, it turns out, attended high school with her briefly.

Meanwhile, Mandy has moved into a house that’s way nicer than the ones she grew up in. Robin is far kinder to her than her own mother had been, and she can see that the baby she’s bearing will have the childhood she never did. Sure, she might have glossed over a few things to make the story work out better, but she’s sure it will be for the best. Now if she could only figure out what her own happy ending might look like.

Told in alternating chapters by two teenage girls, this novel is about figuring out what you want out of your own life and what makes a family. You’ll end up caring about all of the characters — and hoping that each of them can find their path forward.

Personally, I found it such a compelling read that I had to stay up late to finish it just to find out.

Pages: 341

The Baker Street Letters by Michael Robertson

From the jacket: “In Los Angeles, a geological surveyor maps out a proposed subway route — and then goes missing. His eight-year-old daughter in her desperation turns to the one person she thinks might help — she writes a letter to Sherlock Holmes. That letter creates an uproar at 221b Baker Street, which now houses the law offices of attorney and man-about-town Reggie Heath and his hapless brother Nigel. Instead of filing the letter like he’s supposed to, Nigel decides to investigate. Soon he’s flying off to Los Angeles, inconsiderately leaving a very dead body on the floor in his office. Big brother Reggie follows Nigel to California, as does Reggie’s sometime lover, Laura — a quick-witted stage actress who’s captured the hearts of both brothers. When Nigel is arrested, Reggie must use all his wits to solve a case that Sherlock Holmes would have savored, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fans will adore.”

My take: When one rents the real address of 221b Baker Street, with the lease comes the responsibility of replying (by form letter) to the inquiries that arrive addressed to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.

High-class lawyer Reggie Heath is so excited by the space and the location that he doesn’t really pay attention to that bit of the lease agreement. But his office manager does, and assigns the task to Reggie’s younger brother, Nigel, who is recently out of the mental hospital and awaiting clearance from a review board to resume practicing law after an embarrassing misunderstanding.

Nigel, who tends to work from his heart rather than from a logical perspective, disregards the directive to use stock language to reply to Sherlock Holmes queries. His curiosity is particularly piqued when he comes across a request for the return of an item included with correspondence dated 20 years earlier. When that original letter turns out to be from a young girl seeking the sleuth’s help finding her missing father, and when Nigel detects that the signature on the modern request is a forgery, he decides to get involved.

Unfortunately, his abrupt trip to California to investigate overlaps with the discovery of the dead body of the office manager in Nigel’s office — with his head bashed in by Nigel’s statue.

What’s a big brother to do but put off Scotland Yard and follow his hapless sibling to the U.S. — even if it does ultimately mean that Reggie will visit unsavory neighborhoods, get arrested for a second murder, and nearly lose his own life?

I picked this book up at Sam Weller’s in Salt Lake on their second day open at a new location. They didn’t have the book I was after in soft-cover, so instead of buying it in hard-cover, I bought two other books instead.

I hadn’t heard anything about the mystery prior to picking it up off the shelf and thought the premise sounded promising. I’m not sure the execution lived up to the promise, with heroes whose powers of deduction at times would have put Inspector Lestrade in a positive light. However, the book was still a good — light and quick — way to pass a flight and may be considered worth checking out from the library.

Pages: 277

Ivy + Bean by Annie Barrows and Sophie Blackall (illustrator)

From the jacket: “Meet Ivy and Bean, two friends who never meant to like each other. The moment they saw each other, Bean and Ivy knew they would never be friends. But when Bean plays a trick on her sister and has to hide — quick! — Ivy comes to the rescue with her wand, some face paint, and a bucket of worms. Will they end up in trouble? Maybe. Will they have fun? Of course!

My take: A cute story about two seven-year-old neighbors. Impish Bean is non-stop energy. Ivy seems more restrained, with her nose always in a book. And neither girl is interested in befriending the other, particularly because their mothers recommend it as a good idea. (Sound familiar, Mum?) When Bean’s prank on older sister Nancy goes awry, leaving Bean on the hunt for a way to leave the scene of the crime, Ivy comes to her aid and initiates Bean into the ways of magic. Their worlds will never be the same.

Perfect for the preschool set as a long read-aloud or for young elementary school readers who are moving on to chapter books. This is the first in a series.

Pages: 120

I read this over several days during the first week of the month — commuting, a sunny lunch break, and one evening to finish it up:

The Christmas Rat by Avi

From the jacket: “He is one weird Christmas visitor — his hair and moustache an unearthly white-blond, his voice a gruff rumble. He fills the apartment doorway. From two metal cases he produces what a boy would expect from an exterminator: Toxic roach powders and poisonous fog bombs. But a crossbow?”

My take: Eric, a middle-schooler living in New York City, is home for Christmas break. His parents are both working, his friends have either left town or are sick, and he’s already discovered his presents tucked under his parents’ bed, leaving him bored and restless. He’s got nothing to do but sit around the apartment, which puts him at home when the exterminator arrives.

The man, ex-Army, bears a crossbow, keys to every lock in the building, a blood-red business card, and a seeming hatred of all things pestilent. Anjela “Anje” Gabrail tells Eric to keep an eye out for rats around the building. When Eric sees one in the basement and calls Anje, the man invites him to help do some recon work and find the rat’s nest, so as to best destroy the problem. Lacking other distractions, Eric agrees, but later he begins to have second thoughts. Unfortunately, the game is on, and Anje is not one to back down.

Will Anje get his “man”? Or will the rat still be scurrying around the building come Christmas morning? Ultimately, Eric is going to have to decide which side of the battle he’s going to come down on, and it will take all of his focus and resources to ensure victory.

The story is probably a little intense for those children under the age of eight, but fair game for the rest of us. Plus, I will say that although I recognized the book as an allegory early on, it wasn’t until I read the author’s note at the end that the final bit fell into place for me. Clever.

Pages: 135

The first book finished in 2012:

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

From the jacket: “Ben and Rose secretly wish their lives were different. Ben longs for the father he has never known. Rose dreams of a mysterious actress whose life she chronicles in a scrapbook. When Ben discovers a puzzling clue in his mother’s room and Rose reads an enticing headline in the newspaper, both children set out alone on desperate quests to find what they are missing.”

My take: I loved The Invention of Hugo Cabret when I read it nearly two years ago. I loved the cover when I saw it at the bookstore and bought it for myself based solely on that feature while it was still new in hardcover, which anyone who knows me in real life will tell you is something I never do for authors I don’t already love. So when I learned that Brian Selznick was writing a new book, I vowed to read it, too.

Rudi and Sarah and I got to hear Selznick talk about his second book, Wonderstruck, at the National Book Festival this fall, and it sounded truly promising, especially for a stand-alone sophomore work.

But then work happened this fall, and I essentially stopped reading and sort of fell into a book slump. So when Rudi surprised me with a copy for Christmas, I was utterly delighted and started reading it in restrained little chunks the very next day.

Wonderstruck takes what Selznick did with The Invention of Hugo Cabret — combine words and art in a singular way that defies easy characterization into a genre of literature — and expands on it. In this work, he tells parallel stories within the two styles of storytelling, eventually drawing them together into a single, comprehensive tale.

Ben, whose story arc comprises the text portion of the novel, is a twelve-year-old boy in small-town Minnesota 1977. He has been living with his aunt and uncle and their family since the sudden death of his single mother three months earlier. His prized possession from earlier days of happiness is a wooden box containing a collection of small items that have meaning for him. One stormy night, he discovers a secret his mother kept from him and sets about unraveling it, with nearly disastrous results.

Rose, whose portion of the book is told through illustration, is growing up in Hoboken, New Jersey, 50 years earlier. She has a view of New York City from her window, a bedroom filled with books and models of skyscrapers, and an obsession with the life and career of silent film star Lillian Mayhew.

Told in concert and interspersed over varying numbers of pages, Rose and Ben’s stories will overlap in unexpected places and ways. And, eventually, the lives of these two children born a half century apart will bring them both to the same place — New York’s American Museum of Natural History — in their quests for answers.

Charming and masterful, Wonderstruck offers you essentially a movie inside the cover of a novel. Do not let the book’s size scare you off, as it will only take a few delightful hours to read it start to finish, and when you close the cover with a smile, you’ll be tempted to begin again, or, at the very least, flip back through to better appreciate the detail that went into the pictorial portion of the novel. A recommended read for … well … everyone.

Pages: 637

It’s only been a week since the dawn of 2012 and already I’m behind on my book reviews. Please know that it is the fault of civil engineering and the need to understand the different types of drawbridges that got in the way, and I can’t see that being a repeat problem. (Procrastination, on the other hand, will be a relentless foe.)

Rest assured that I’ll be writing about Wonderstruck on Monday. And later in the week I’ll share thoughts about The Christmas Rat and Ivy + Bean. But for now, I’m turning in.