The need-to-read book: Today is the book birthday for Janette Rallison’s My Fair Godmother: “After her boyfriend dumps her for her older sister, sophomore Savannah Delano wishes she could find a true prince to take her to the prom. Enter Chrissy (Chrysanthemum) Everstar: Savannah’s gum-chewing, cell phone–carrying, high heel-wearing Fair Godmother. Showing why she’s only Fair—because she’s not a very good fairy student—Chrissy mistakenly sends Savannah back in time to the Middle Ages, first as Cinderella, then as Snow White. Finally she sends Tristan, a boy in Savannah’s class, back instead to turn him into her prom-worthy prince. When Savannah returns to the Middle Ages to save Tristan, they must team up to defeat a troll, a dragon, and the mysterious and undeniably sexy Black Knight.”
The just-finished-and-wow book: Laurie Halse Anderson’s Chains, even though I had other things I was supposed to be doing this morning. A disconcerting look at New York City during the Revolutionary War from the point of view of Isabel, a black girl living there, hearing talk of freedom, and being reminded over and over again by both sides that the talk isn’t about freedom for her. I loved this book the vivid prose that made me feel like I really was in New York in 1776. And I was struck by–not the people who were cruel to Isabel (though the cruelty was pretty horrible)–but by the many people who were sympathetic to Isabel but either wouldn’t or believed they couldn’t do anything about it. Because much as I’d like to believe otherwise, I fear that’s where most of us would be, maybe even are: wincing at the injustice we see, giving a smile and a few sympathetic words, coming home and blogging about it to our friends (who assure us it wasn’t our fault and there was nothing we could really do), and then pushing the uneasiness into the back of our minds and going on with our lives. An uncomfortable thought, that, as it should be.