Benold Book Blog

I’ve read a lot of great sci-fi, fantasy, beyond the present reality books lately. I’ve loved May-Bird and the Mysterious Benedict Society and Percy Jackson and the Olympians. I will make time to read the upcoming offerings for the last two and still hope to have time to read all of the 2008 Lone Stars while I wonder if Maximum Ride will have a book #5.

However, when I discovered Joan Bauer’s new book, I just dropped everything to read it. I have been one of her fans since I discovered her first book Squashed almost fifteen years ago. The heroine, Ellie is so real. Yes, she has the unusual hobby of raising giant pumpkins but she’s just a teen trying to deal with her widowed dad and her lack of a boyfriend. Rules of the Road, Best Foor Forward, Hope Was Here are all stories with strong young women trying to be true to themselves and to a highly held sense of right and wrong.

Lest you think she only has female protagonists, I also enjoyed Sticks, whose male lead plays championship pool to honor his dead father and Stand Tall  with Tree the six foot three middle-schooler who can’t play basketball but is bonding with his grandfather a Vietnam vet.

Yep, I’m a Joan Bauer loyalist and when I read her new book Peeled I was not disappointed. Hildy is a writer for the high school paper attempting to live up to her deceased father’s journalistic ideals. The new  owner/editor of the town paper has dumped every rule of solid, ethical reporting in favor of some pretty shady dealing in this tiny, rural community whose livelihood is in the apple orchards. Can the school paper be heard over the sensationalistic voice of the local news source? Can a team of teens triumph over the growing group of fearful and gullible adults?

And don’t forget the romance…Bauer almost always has one. Nothing dramatic, traumatic, or immoral, these books always leave me with a bit of a smile and a lot of hope that this generation will be true to themselves and their ideals and maybe even live happily ever after. If that is fantasy, so be it. I call it “normal.”