Personal Picks: Swordbird and Big Mouth and Ugly Girl

I just finished reading two books, both of which I picked up on recommendations. Swordbird is a fun fantasy that a student recommended and lent to me (thank you Jennifer!), and Mrs. Pratt (who provides me with a lot of my picks), sent Big Mouth and Ugly Girl my way. I enjoyed both of them.

If you're into swords and sorcery, especially if you're a fan of Brian Jacque's Redwall series, Swordbird might be just up your alley. It tells the story of two tribes of birds, the Sunrise cardinals and the Bluewingle bluejays, who are currently at war, but also threatened by a greater enemy, the tyrannical hawk Turnatt, who plans to take over their world. Turnatt has an unpleasant taste for the eggs of other birds, which he believes will make him live forever, and has also enslaved a great number of creatures to build his stronghold, Fortress Glooming, for him. With an army of crows at his command, he casts a dark shadow over the forest of Stone Run. The one hope that the bluejays and cardinals have is a mythical being known as Swordbird, who defeated Turnatt in the past. The story follows a pair of young birds and a small slave bird called Miltin as they attempt to find a way to call Swordbird and defeat Turnatt.

Nancy Yi Fan (who's only thirteen!) is able to create some wonderful imagery. The vision of birds swooping and diving as they duel, tiny swords clutched in their claws, is great. One scene I enjoyed in particular involves a massive food fight, where a mob of Turnatt's henchmen (henchbirds?) are driven away by a barrage of pies, nuts, soup, berries, and other foodstuffs when they attempt to storm a traveling theater.

The only flaws I found in the book were a fairly predictable plot and some clunky writing. Considering Fan's age when she wrote this, though, these are forgivable. Not many people can claim to have a published bestseller before they enter high school! I hope that she continues to write and grow as an author. Overall, I'd give Swordbird an eight out of ten.

Big Mouth and Ugly Girl, by Joyce Carol Oats, was a book I had in my sights for quite some time. The Frolio book club read it last year, and I remember asking Mrs. Pratt about it. She had nothing but good things to say about it, so I picked it up two weeks ago. I know a book's good when I rip through it in about two or three days. I think I was stirring my spaghetti on the stove one night while reading BMandUG in my other hand.

BMandUG deals with something we've all read about in the paper or seen on television: school bomb threats. The book tells the story of a junior in high school, Matt Donaghy, who is surprised one day in study hall when a pair of police officers come in and escort him away. It turns out that Matt has been accused of threatening to blow up his school, Columbine style, after someone overhears a joke he makes in the cafeteria. The school administration, forced to act out of concern for the students' safety, have to treat Matt's "threat" seriously, and he finds his life turned upside down as things spin rapidly out of control. Many of his friends cut off contact with him, and it appears that no one will stand up for him: no one except for Ursula Riggs, the headstrong star of the girl's basketball team who happens to have overheard what he said during lunch, and knows that he isn't serious.

Ursula steps in to speak for Matt's innocence, even though she doesn't know him, and he is eventually exonerated. I found this surprising: the bomb threat incident doesn't take up much of the story. Instead, Oats focuses her story more on what happens after the incident. She takes you into the aftermath, and shows how little things like a lie, an unwise word in the wrong situation, or gossip, can tear people's lives and communities apart.

Strong points of the story? There were several. First, I enjoyed how the book swapped narratives. Basically, Ursula and Matt takes turns telling the story. One will narrate in one chapter, and then the story will switch to the other character in the following chapter. You end up seeing the story from two points of view which begin to overlap more as the friendship between Matt and Ursula develops. I also liked how the book hits home. It was easy to imagine something similar happening in my own home town or school, and I truly empathized not only with Matt, but also his teachers, principal, and everyone else who gets dragged into the fiasco.

Overall? Great read- I really enjoyed it. I'd give it an 8.5 out of ten.