Review by New York Times Review
RULE No. 1: Life is not fair. At least if you live inside a Meg Cabot novel it isn't. And sometimes it's SO not fair, you can't BELIEVE how unfair it is. AT ALL. Meg Cabot, chronic capitalizer and reigning grande dame of teenage chick lit, has too many best-selling series to keep track of - there's the reluctant princess in the "Princess Diaries" books, the reluctant communicator with the dead in "The Mediator," the reluctant national hero in "All-American Girl," and so on (at last count Cabot, at age 41, has 54 books out, a handful of them geared for grown-up girls). As far-ranging as her concepts may be, they all introduce some life-changing event then circle back to the supreme "I want my normal life back" injustice of it all. Cabot's books are quick-paced romps that take one night to read and, apparently, not much longer to write. In addition to regularly updating her blog with detailed posts, she has said in interviews that she writes five to 10 pages a day, turning out roughly a book a month. More unbelievable, though, is that the work holds up. While legions of Meg Cabot imitators get waylaid by brand-name this and "Oh my God" that, Cabot's voice remains fresh. She favors the spill-the-beans-as-you-go style common to teenage fiction, but her material has a spirited fizz that's lacking in many so-called young adult comedies. Makes sense, then, that she's trying her hand at books for younger readers. In the first installment of "Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls," her new middle-grade series for Scholastic Press, Cabot has dialed back her tic of randomly capitalizing every fourth word (she's switched over to italics), the boy-craziness and the out-there premises. The only wild thing happening to 9-year-old Allie Finkle is her parents' decision to move from their perfectly nice new house in the suburbs to a Victorian fixer-upper that "looked very big and creepy sitting there on the street. All the windows - and there were a lot of them - were dark and sort of looked like eyes staring down at us." Worse still, Allie's going to have to leave behind her slightly, annoying best friend, Mary Kay Shiner; her geode collection; and her cozy elementary school. It's up to Allie, an aspiring Veterinarian who's not above burping or smashing the occasional cupcake in a deserving classmate's face, to figure out a way to win the war against moving across town. To keep herself grounded in this ever-befuddling world, Allie has started writing down the rules for everything. Not the rules for science and math, which she gets. But the protocol for life's more elusive bits. "There are no rules, for instance, for friendship. I mean, besides the one about Treat your friends the way you'd want them to treat you, which I've already broken about a million times." Allie's newly learned rules, like "Don't stick a spatula down your best friend's throat" and "Don't put your cat in a suitcase," serve as the book's chapter titles, and the cheerful yellow and salmon book jacket opens up, Adventcalendar style, to reveal lines where readers are encouraged to write their own rules. WITH nothing but these rules serving as the book's gimmick, the story has a looser feel than a typical Cabot novel. The structure suits this age group, mirroring the timewarp experience of childhood itself. One minute Allie is playing dollhouse with a friend ("I suggested that the baby doll get kidnapped and a ransom note, including the baby doll's cut-off ear, get sent to the house by the glass dolphin family") and the next she's fantasizing about what awaits her in the attic of her new house ("The disembodied hand had lived in the attic in that movie I had seen! ... Green, glowing and so scary!"). The tale hums along entertainingly, then takes an unexpected turn when our heroine finds herself on a disastrous play date. Mary Kay Shiner and Brittany Hauser show Allie what their game "lady business executive" entails (hint: it has to do with the "Don't put your cat in a suitcase" rule). Allie handles the situation with aplomb, and her moxie only increases a few scenes later, at the Lung Chung restaurant, where she comes to the aid of an imperiled snapping turtle named Wang Ba. Though its tone is slightly younger than Cabot's books for teenagers, "Moving Day" still brims with vintage Cabot humor and inventiveness. There's the heroine's absurd swirl of know-it-all-ness and cluelessness ("I am older than Mary Kay by a month. Possibly this is why I don't cry as often as she does, because I am more mature. Also, I am more used to hardship, not being an only child") and the droll details that are effortlessly tossed off, like the little brother who dreams of having a bedroom with velvet wallpaper and the boy who gives Mary Kay this charming birthday card: "Too bad Allie's moving, now you'll have no friends at all Happy Birthday!" Cabot is under contract with Scholastic for five more books in the series, though it's unlikely the franchise will stop there. This is an author who can write sequels in her sleep. That's not a rule. More like a law of nature. 'Too bad Allie's moving, now you'll have no friends at all. Happy Birthday!' Lauren Mechling is the author of the novel "Dream Girl," which will be published in July.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Cool stuff is all around you, notes Newquist, but sometimes you don't want the boring junk that you need to sit through to find out about it. In a tone both light and humorous, Newquist and Aronson aim to please by assembling a tantalizing miscellany codes, puzzles, best lists, brief history and science facts, instructions for making fake blood and playing Ultimate Frisbee, and even advice about facing up to a shark (try not to bleed too much). Like Conn and Hal Iggulden's similar popular import, The Dangerous Book for Boys (2007), for somewhat older readers, this has a text-heavy, multicolumn format and a retro look, despite trendy graphics. The type is also small, which may deter young browsers, and section heads occasionally disappear in the ditch. But design aside, this offers lots of good fun, and with so much chick lit available, it's nice to see special attention being paid to boys. In fact, there's nothing here to keep girls away but the title.--Zvirin, Stephanie Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Filled with facts, puzzles, stats, stories and more, For Boys Only: The Biggest, Baddest Book Ever by Marc Aronson and HP Newquist offers up information on favorite subjects. Topics range from the hypothetical (such as "Fantasy Wars" which pit Vikings against pirates) to the historical ("Athletes Who Changed the World") to the instructional (how to make fake blood). Printed with black and red text and illustrated throughout, this graphically fresh and topically diverse collection should capture the imagination of its target audience. (Feiwel and Friends, $14.95 240p ages 7-12 ISBN 9780-312-37706-9; Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-Aronson and Newquist add to the number of recent books targeted at boys with a pleasantly jumbled miscellanea of odd facts, sports stories, and forensic lore. There's a page of math tricks, information on how to create, or solve, a coded message, and maps that show the possible locations of hidden treasure. Plus! There are coded puzzles scattered across the bottoms of most pages, including a final "PUZZLE SUPREME." It's all appealing stuff. Unfortunately, the book falls flat when it comes to its design and illustrations. The latter are stiff, square, and about as much fun as a chart of road signs in a safety manual. One section is called "Fear Factor: America's Scariest Amusement Park Rides," but there are no pictures of any of them in action. Another is "Supercars," with descriptions of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and other dream vehicles-but only tiny outline drawings of them that will not satisfy boys interested in these kinds of cars. A book like this one cries out for cool photographs. Most boys will pick this book up, flip through it, and put it back down again.-Walter Minkel, New York Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
This book is a collection of (unsourced) facts, lists, historical anecdotes, and projects aimed primarily at a middle-grade boy audience. Topics range from satellites to poisons to explorers. Throughout, the authors add commentary, occasionally providing "reader challenges" intended to provoke further thought. Retro-industrial spot-art graphics mainly in strong red and black illustrate the information. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
