Cute Emergency by Tony Heally, 2014

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on Goodreads 

Are you having a bad day? Is life getting you down? Do you wish you could go back to bed? Sounds like you've got a cute emergency on your hands!
With over a million followers, the Cute Emergency Twitter feed brings sunshine into people's lives every day. Cute Emergency is dedicated to trawling the internet and rooting out the sweetest animal photos in existence: from sleeping kittens, to tiny piglets, to heart-melting puppies. Now, for the first time, this charming book gathers together the very best of its collection.
It's guaranteed - there's an animal picture within these pages to thaw even the frostiest of hearts.

(176 pages)


I'm sure you're wondering why I'm reviewing a book with a grand total of about fifty words in the entire thing. Well, you may know from reading this blog that I recently moved cross-country (and that my dominant wrist is back in a splint - yippee). The first week or so of moving in, Cute Emergency became available for request on the review site Blogging for Books. It offered me pictures of baby animals to cure my stress, and - can you blame me? - I requested it right away. I honestly can't say I'm sorry I did: it was a great stress reliever not only for me, but also for all three of my siblings (who took turns stealing it and leaving it random places - it took me a month just to get my hands back on the book again!).

And oh, gosh, this book is so adorable! After sitting down and reading it cover to cover a few minutes ago, my lips are still perking up into a smile even as I type this review. It's a fact that I just can't see that many adorable animals without flipping out. I don't know if many people can.

The book is divided into five chapters, or "emergency levels," labelled from "Low" to "Extreme." Reading through the book cover to cover, there actually really is a noticeable increase in cuteness from section to section; in the first one or two chapters I was thinking "this is nice, but nothing special," but by the end I was smiling and laughing so much I almost choked trying not to laugh out loud. I think it's pretty cool that there really are different "cuteness intensities" in the different chapters. There are a few captions that don't really match the picture very well or aren't very funny, but most of them are great and turn a cute picture into a hilarious one.

If you like cute pictures of animals, then this book is definitely for you - and if you know someone who loves cute animals, then I just found you the perfect present for them. A 176-page book not enough for your fluffy-animal needs? Then check out the Cute Emergency Twitter account here. I used to follow them myself, before Cute Emergency was ever a book. The pictures, I can attest to firsthand, are adorable, though there sure are a lot of them. Only follow the Twitter account if you're prepared for cute-animal overload!

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book through the Blogging for Books program in exchange for an honest review.

The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex, 2007

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It all starts with a school essay.
When twelve-year-old Gratuity (“Tip”) Tucci is assigned to write five pages on “The True Meaning of Smekday” for the National Time Capsule contest, she’s not sure where to begin. When her mom started telling everyone about the messages aliens were sending through a mole on the back of her neck? Maybe on Christmas Eve, when huge, bizarre spaceships descended on the Earth and the aliens – called Boov – abducted her mother? Or when the Boov declared Earth a colony, renamed it “Smekland” (in honor of glorious Captain Smek), and forced all Americans to relocate to Florida via rocketpod?
In any case, Gratuity’s story is much, much bigger than the assignment. It involves her unlikely friendship with a renegade Boov mechanic named J.Lo.; a futile journey south to find Gratuity’s mother at the Happy Mouse Kingdom; a cross-country road trip in a hovercar called Slushious; and an outrageous plan to save the Earth from yet another alien invasion.
Fully illustrated with “photos,” drawings, newspaper clippings, and comics sequences, this is a hilarious, perceptive, genre-bending novel by a remarkable new talent. the planet from a really big catastrophe.

(423 pages)

I heard really excellent things about The True Meaning of Smekday, so I decided to read it even though my mother really didn't like it (she thought it was stupid). After finishing it, on one hand I can see what she means about the book being stupid fluff - after all, it's a silly book about a girl and an alien driving across the country in a floating car after the aliens invaded Earth. Yeah, not a lot of depth there. But on a different level, a deeper level, The True Meaning of Smekday is much more than a silly romp through cliche action tropes. On that other level, it's actually mocking those cliches. Case in point: this quote from the book (which I added to Goodreads because it was too long to put in here).

Underneath the entertainment fluff, it's actually a pretty serious look at racism and "racial superiority." There are a lot of parallels between the Boov's colonization of Earth and the European colonization of America, and I think it's an amazing way to point out the terrible mistakes made in the past through a first-hand exploration of the colonization of the Boov, who honestly believe that humans are basically like dogs and don't really mind being relocated into cramped human reservations. The parallel is accentuated by one of the secondary characters, a Native American man who has spent his entire life dealing with bias. It's also extremely powerful, at least to me, that every time Tip talks about her mother she has to explain to people that her mom is Caucasian, not African American. The idea that a black girl can have a white mom doesn't jive with people's perceptions of race, and it throws them for a loop.

But enough about the serious stuff. Let's get into the characters who make this book so funny! Tip is a fun narrator because she's so down-to-earth and sarcastic. She is such a realist it's hilarious, and she's constantly saying things like "this is the way things should happen: [insert what usually happens in novels] . . . and, yeah, that didn't happen." This was incredibly refreshing to read, and made her feel so much more realistic. Her life isn't like something out of a storybook, things happen that are messy and ridiculous and embarrassing. And sure, crazy stuff happens that will never, ever happen in real life, but it never feels like the book jumps off the real end because Tip is just so . . . so human that it really feels like her story is perfectly reasonable.

Now let's talk about J.Lo. He has to be my favorite character! I love his way of speaking English, slurring words together and using them incorrectly at the funniest times. He's like a combination of an adult and a little kid, altering between adult-level skills (like dealing with complicated machinery) and making kiddy mistakes/having the simplistic reasoning skills of a child. It works out to be hilarious, and heartwarming, and I just want to bring J.Lo home and have a long conversation with him about, I don't know, just about anything so I can hear more of his goofy reasoning.

All in all, a great book that I highly recommend. It's the most engaging social commentary I've ever read, and the awesome thing about it is that you can totally not pick up on any of the underlying messages, and still have a great time with it! The message doesn't drive the plot, the characters drive the plot and the message just kind of hitches a ride underneath.

P.S. You've probably heard of the movie Home, which is based on The True Meaning of Smekday. I watched it right after finishing the book, and I really enjoyed it. You should definitely watch it if you're interested. Don't watch the movie first, though, because it cuts out a lot of the best parts from the book, and spoils the rest of them!

Finally by Wendy Mass, 2010

Synopsis (from Goodreads):
A humorous look at what it means to FINALLY turn twelve years old.
You can pierce your ears when you're twelve. You can go to the mall with your friends when you're twelve. You can babysit little Timmy next door when you're twelve. You can get a cell phone when you're twelve. Hey, you can even ride in the front passenger-side seat when you're twelve.When you're twelve, when you're twelve, when you're twelve . . .
My name is Rory Swenson, and I've been waiting to turn twelve my whole life. In exactly 18 hours, 36 minutes, and 52 seconds, it will finally happen.
My life will officially begin.
(304 pages)

Hopefully you will have read my review of 11 Birthdays, the first book in the Willow Falls series, before reading this review. I am reviewing all four of the books in the series because I started rereading all of them when I was recovering from wrist surgery (side note: physical therapy is going well!). While I love the first book, I haven't actually purchased it yet. I don't really know why, but I've always just thought that if I wanted to read it I could get it from the library. I do, however, own this one. I bought it with a gift card almost 2 years ago, and have reread it countless times. It is arguably better than the first book, and was the book that truly cemented my love for the series.

The book follows Rory as she ticks off a birthday bucket list of sorts: she has been waiting her whole life to turn 12, which is when her parents will finally let her do "grown-up" things like drinking coffee and going to boy-girl parties and staying home alone. The first time I read this book, I had done practically nothing on Rory's list. Several years later, I have done most of the things on her list (still waiting for the coffee, though!). Rereading it now is like a step back in time to my first experiences with things like getting my ears pierced, babysitting, and getting contact lenses. Rory's experiences as a sheltered girl trying out grown up activities for the first time mirrors my life in more than one way, and out of all the characters I believe I share the most in common (both in life experiences and personality) with Rory. Though I have to say, my mishaps were never near the scale of hers.

You don't have to read these books in order. Well, at least you don't have to read the first two in order. The third one is much more enjoyable if you've read the first two, because the characters from the first two books are featured heavily in the third one. The fourth book is definitely much more meaningful and less confusing if you've read the other books 1st. But for the first two books, you can read them in either order. They are both built to be standalones, and are perfectly wonderful under their own power. I read them in order, but it wouldn't have mattered if I'd read Finally first. In fact, if the plot of the first book doesn't appeal to you, just read this one. They are very different books, but both are excellent reads.

Stay tuned for my review of 13 Gifts!

Swindle by Gordon Korman, 2008

Synopsis (from Goodreads):
After a mean collector named Swindle cons him out of his most valuable baseball card, Griffin Bing must put together a band of misfits to break into Swindle's compound and recapture the card. There are many things standing in their way -- a menacing guard dog, a high-tech security system, a very secret hiding place, and their general inability to drive -- but Griffin and his team are going to get back what's rightfully his . . . even if hijinks ensue. 
(256 pages)


This is a fun book that I first read years ago. Since then both I and my middle school brother have read the rest of the books, more or less in order. I wouldn't call this one of my favorite books from the series, but because it's the first it's definintely fun to see where everything began. This is where the team comes together for the first time: it's their first crazy adventure, and coming back to it there's a bit of nostalgia in the air - or at least to me there is.

This is a Middle Grade series that is a lot of fun. My middle school-aged brother always sucks these books in as fast as I get ahold of them. He isn't obsessed with them or anything, but he likes them enough he'll drop a less interesting read for a day or two to read a new one. I do still get them when they ccome out, for my own reading enjoyment (I was reading them before he was!), but I don't go out of my way to snag a copy of the new books or even remember when there is a new one half the time - they just sort of pop up every now and then, and I check them out to read them.

As for this book in particular, I'm sorry I can't remember more details. I set out to review this almost a year ago after re-reading it, and forgot to actually do the writing part of writing a review. Now I, slightly neurotic, am trying to clear out my draft pile (which right now is filled with "spam-posts" that I started and never finished a long time ago). Some would point out that I could just throw out all those old half-posts by hitting the "delete" button. But nay, that would be cheating!

So here we go. Characters, lets talk about characters. I love Korman's characters. Just, you know, in general. He comes up with the funnest MCs and supporters. The Swindle books really put his talent in the best light as he draws each unique, unrealistic but oh-so-realistic character in the group. There's Logan, the aspiring actor, Savannah the animal lover, Melissa the shy computer genius, Ben the ever present sidekick, and Griffin, known as The Man with the Plan. The villains are interesting if not incredibly three-dimensional. There's the school bully who forces himself in on the plan and of course there's swindle himself who jerked Griffin out of a valuable baseball card that could save his family from having to move away.

If you like Middle Grade books, then check out this series. If you don't have time to read the entire series, then I would recommend starting with some of Korman's other books: this is a very good series, but it gets better as it goes along. If you're looking for good, funny Middle Grade book either for yourself or for a middle schooler you know, Korman is probably the best Middle Grade author I've ever read. If you have read this series and are looking for more books by him, an excellent place to start would be with Ungifted, No More Dead Dogs, or Schooled (the links go to Goodreads). You can read my review of Ungifted here.