What We’re Reading

Saint Iggy | K.L. Going

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Iggy Corso is misunderstood. His mother is prone to disappear, his father is always drunk, their dealer is frequently banging down the door, and he just sees things differently than other people. Like the incident in Spanish class with the new girl. But if he wants to make his case, he’ll have to wait for his hearing. In the meantime, he plans to make a plan. A big one. To change people’s mind about him.

Instead, he ends up falling into a drug-deal gone bad, being taken in by a friend’s wealthy mother, and realizing that Public School probably isn’t the right place for him after all. So maybe his grand plan isn’t going to happen…but that doesn’t mean he can’t still do a really big thing.

Saint Iggy | K.L. Going

Living in the projects with a drugged-out dad and a mom who’s never there, Iggy Corso has had a tough life. So when he’s kicked out of school for a misunderstanding, Iggy decides that he’s going to do something good–something so good that it makes the papers and everyone will welcome him back and see what a great person he is. Iggy sets out with his friend Mo–a wealthy older boy who has “denounced” his wealth and lives in squalor–to help him find his good deed. Mo has gotten in some trouble with Freddie, the same drug dealer who supplies to Iggy’s parents. Mo owes Freddie a large amount money for some drugs, and he goes back to his affluent neighborhood to ask his mom for money, and brings Iggy along. Mo’s mom tries to help Iggy, and there he gets more ideas about his potential heroic act.

When Iggy finally formalizes a plan to carry out his good deed, everything becomes chaotic and confusing, up to the final shocking scene that ends the novel.

Poignant and moving, Saint Iggy is a gripping tale of a boy who can’t get a break, no matter what he does. Reading this book will put its reader through the entire gamut of strong emotions: anger, sadness, anticipation and fear. A book that everyone should read, Saint Iggy will give its reader something to think and talk about long after they’ve finished the novel. These are characters that won’t let you go–and you won’t want to let them go yourself.

Queen of Cool | Cecil Castelluci

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Libby Brin is an IT girl. She’s funny, her parties are legendary, and she starts trends, whether she means to or not. And yet, she isn’t happy.

Libby is bored. Her friends bring her no comfort or joy. Her parents are going through changes, which travel down the line to make further impacts into the sudden non-sense that is her life.

When Libby signed up for an Internship at the Zoo she was confused, but when her friends razzed her about it she decided to see it through. In the end she gets herself kicked out, only to discover she’s come to love the place.

A quick read, full of laughs, and a pretty honest look into the decisions we face as we start to ask the bigger questions in life.

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Are we There yet? | David Levithan

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David and Elijah Silver are 10 years apart, and while they were thick as thieves when Elijah was young, and Danny would wake the house every night to make sure the baby was ok, once Danny hit his teens, Elijah was shut out. Being so young, he didn’t understand, but he did learn to deal. Danny shut himself into his world, Elijah got lost in another.

One morning each brother receives a call from their mother explaining about Italy. She and their father were going to go, but his leg is acting up. The trip is entirely pre-paid, non-refundable. She wants her sons to go. And while each smells a ruse, each agrees to go.

The trip gets off to a rocky start. Try as they might (or might not) the brothers don’t know how to relate. Danny thinks Elijah is lazy, and wonders how he’ll survive in the real world, Elijah thinks Danny is too caught up in work and seriousness, and worries that he’ll never really live. Danny has strict plans on what he wants to do and when and how, whereas Elijah is content to wander and wonder and let the trip happen to him.

It’s on one such outing that he meets Julia, who appears from nowhere, and promises she’ll see him soon. Though he doesn’t know how that could be, he believes her anyway, and anxiously spends the end of his time in Venice searching for her. And on a balcony, he does indeed find her, much to his delight. Even more delightful: she’s also going to Rome.

Elijah spends most of the trip between asleep. Danny’s driving strikes him as restless, and he figures if he can’t see, he can’t be scared. But when Danny wakes him while they’re driving through a field of sunflowers, he feels a moment of sincere appreciation, knowing he could have slept right through and missed a wondrous thing.

Once in Rome, Elijah is impatient to find Julia, and so Danny says they should go find her and ask her to dinner. I’m sure you can see the dilemma. But dinner goes well. When Elijah befriends a neihboring table, Julia and Danny entertain one another. When Elijah returns his attention, Julia returns hers, and jealousy is kept at bay. When dinner ends, Elijah and Julia head off on their own, and Danny is left feeling a perpetual third wheel. Wherever he goes, he seems to be intruding, or inivisible.

Through the twists and turns of life containing Julia, both brothers come to certain relizations. Given plenty of time to himself, Danny starts to reevaluate, and reaches out to old friends. Elijah tries to balance his life back home with life as it is in Italy, unsure how to make them mesh. In the end, the separate ordeals give them a new kind of understanding of one another. And while the trip didn’t go down as smoothly as the parents might have ideally hoped, it did in the end have the desired effect. Danny and Elijah will likely never again be thick as theives, but they’re no longer worlds apart either. Or if they are, the world is certainly manageable, where it was once a distance impossible to breach.

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