We're taking a break from the heavy subjects this month with the What A Girl Wants series and instead offering up the group's collective wisdom when it comes to books and girls. Although we are mostly aimed at the 12 & up crowd, you will find in this post (and Part 2 next week) lots of ideas for what we think you should buy for the girls in your life. I've mostly left the choosing to the WAGW crew although, well, I do chime in with some additional ideas based on their suggestions. Happy shopping - and more than anything, happy reading!!!

Jacqueline Kelly suggests: "The Diary of Anne Frank. This should be compulsory reading for every girl. And for every boy. And every adult, for that matter. This haunting book will stay with you for the rest of your life."

CM - As it happens, there are two new looks at the diary out this year: Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, the Afterlife by Francine Prose wherein the author suggests that Anne revised her diary and planned to publish it after the war and Anne Frank: Her Life in Words and Pictures by Menno Metselaar, a visual guide to her life published this fall by Roaring Brook.

Melissa Wyatt suggests: "For girls who are looking for more supernatural romance, I highly recommend THE CHINA GARDEN by Liz Berry. A strong female protagonist who finds her own way to accept a seemingly inescapable destiny, a real live human boy for her to love, an intricate and beautiful mystery based in British folklore and enough steam to set off plenty of palpitations.

And this is the perfect time to catch your girl up on Megan Whalen Turner's magnificent Thief series. The fourth book, A CONSPIRACY OF KINGS, will hit bookshelves in March. (And psst! It's fantastic!) So gear up with the first three books: THE THIEF, THE QUEEN OF ATTOLIA and THE KING OF ATTOLIA. Set in a psuedo-Mediterranean/medieval world and full of political intrigue and complex relationships, these books are somewhat demanding, but will reward the sophisticated reader many times over. Give these books to fans of Diana Wynne Jones."

CM - If you are a fan of Turner's and have yet to discover Diana Wynne Jones then can I strongly - STRONGLY - suggest you get yourself right over to her end of the shelves and start ordering? My favorite of hers is Fire & Hemlock, a retelling of the Tam Lin ballad which is sadly out of print (why oh why??) but if you find it in a used store then give it to a teen you know asap. Or you could buy Pamela Dean's amazing version of Tam Lin set on a college campus in the early 1970s which I also adore.

Zetta Elliott suggests: "One of the most compelling books I’ve read recently was Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork. Jasmine and Marcelo (who has Asperger’s syndrome) forge an intimate connection when he’s assigned to the mailroom she runs at his father’s law firm; knowing all too well how it feels to be patronized by arrogant, wealthy people, Jasmine patiently takes the time not only to train Marcelo, but to befriend him as well. The disorder—the way his mind works differently than hers—is precisely what makes Marcelo attractive to Jasmine; they don’t instantly fall all over each other, but they gradually understand that their friendship and the respect they have for one another could be the basis of something deep and long-lasting. I loved how Marcelo struggled to distinguish the caring behind Jasmine’s actions; it’s hard for him to detect irony and sarcasm in others, but the subtleties of love were clear enough for him to design a new future in which he could not only be with Jasmine, but help her care for her elderly father and their farm. Marcelo also makes an important ethical decision that threatens his father’s law firm but restores justice to an injured teenage girl. I love this book and would give it to any teen or adult."

CM:I think Zetta's is about the fourth or fifth recommendation I've seen for Marcelo from someone whose taste in books I trust and adore and so yes, this one just went on my personal wish list and if someone doesn't get it for me then I'll buy it myself as a New Year's gift. It just sounds too excellent to let slip away. -CM

Sara Ryan says: "At the risk of being a. obvious and/or b. a suckup, I would like to begin by suggesting that many fine books one could purchase for a twelve year old girl for whatever holidays one might celebrate have, in fact, been written by my esteemed fellow What A Girl Wants panelists.

That said, I'll do what I've done so often in previous responses to this series: return to a book that was highly significant to my twelve year old self. In fact, I mentioned this title in my first WAGW response, but I have more to say.

I reread Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising every year around this time. Will Stanton comes into his power as an Old One as his family celebrates first his birthday and then Christmas. The weight of the struggle between the Light and the Dark is balanced by the weight of holiday traditions, both within Will's family and in the larger world. Over and over, Will is pulled away from a warm, festive context to confront the menace of the Dark. Over and over, he sees himself with double vision, both as the eleven year old boy he still technically is and the Old One that he is, too: alert to threats, and all too aware of the limitations of the adults around him.

Am I making the book sound grim, too depressing to be a holiday gift? It isn't. There's affection, there's humor, there's adventure. But once Will is fully conscious of his identity as an Old One, Cooper never lets the reader forget that his life and the way he relates to those around him has really, significantly, irrevocably changed. And the constant awareness of that fundamental shift in the protagonist's relationship to his world, even as the reader is pulled along through the turns and twists of the plot -- that's one of the qualities that sets The Dark is Rising apart, making it a book that a reader can return to, even when she's very far away from twelve."

CM: Oh man, this recommendation takes me back. I can't remember how old I was when I discovered Susan Cooper but the world she created was so much powerful and significant and meaningful then my lowly junior high existence that it pretty much kept me going for a couple of years. Sara's right - The Dark is Rising is not depressing or dark at all, it's actually quite magnificent and a total no-brainer for the Harry Potter crowd (or fans of His Dark Materials who might have missed it.) The whole series is excellent and so bloody affordable that really there is no excuse to pass this one up.

And as Sara mentioned everyone else's books, I thought I would remind you all how splendid they are just in case you missed them. Jacqueline Kelly wrote The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate which I regard an updated (turn of the 20th century) version of Laura Ingalls with some Jo March, Texas heat and Charles Darwin thrown in for good measure. Melissa Wyatt's Funny How Things Change has one of the most sympathetic teen males in YA lit today, a boy I fell hard for who is trying to figure out if it is okay to love home so much that you don't want to leave it. This is the West Virginia we have all forgotten about and Remy Walker is the boy Bella wishes she was good enough for. She can have the vampire/werewolf dramarama; Remy is where it's at for the real girls.

Zetta Elliott's A Wish After Midnight is a dramatic look at time travel with an African American heroine who finds herself transported back to Brooklyn in 1863 and forced to survive as an apparent runaway slave in the midst of deadly draft riots. Intense does not begin to describe this one and the contemporary and historic plot lines are equally riveting. There's romance too - but man does that ever get tangled up. Zetta just got picked up by Amazon's publishing arm and has a new snazzy cover to show for it.

Finally, Sara Ryan is the creator of my dearly loved Battle Hall Davies, who falls in love with a classmate in Empress of the World and tries to find the truth about family (and love again) in The Rules of Hearts. Sara has also published a comic continuing Battle's story (set between the two novels) Click and a comic about Katrina from Empress, Me and Edith Head. (LOVED this one in particular.) I'm going to mention that Battle is gay because if you have a lesbian or bisexual teen in your life then Sara's books will be very dear. As for meI just fell so hard for Battle and her hopes and dreams and pain and all of her wonderful friends. Coming-of-age drama just does not get any better.

So there you go, LOTS of great books to choose from and more to follow from the rest of the crew next week!

From last week, this piece in the Guardian by Patrick Stewart (aka Captain Picard and Professor X) on domestic violence was quite staggering:

He was an angry, unhappy and frustrated man who was not able to control his emotions or his hands. As a child I witnessed his repeated violence against my mother, and the terror and misery he caused was such that, if I felt I could have succeeded, I would have killed him. If my mother had attempted it, I would have held him down.

Jenny D., has been reading Jo Walton's upcoming Among Others and gives us a hint or two : "...but is basically what you would get if you tailored Graham Joyce's The Tooth Fairy to be exactly the book that would most speak to me in the world, or at least to the grown-up version of my childhood self,..."

Approved by Jenny D., means a total must read for me but as it is Jo Walton we're talking about, it already was on my radar (along with the upcoming Connie Willis of course).

Brian aka Mr. Chompchomp had an interesting observation about the significance of books as magical objects in MG novels. As he has been reading a boatload of SFF for the Cybils I have to assume he knows what he's talking about which had me thinking all kinds of things about what this means about fantastic books or rings or wardrobes or, well, here's Brian's point:

But there is a general consensus among the nominees that the most powerful of magical items are books. Books as portals, books as secret codes, books simply emanating power, books offering either narrative or knowledge. This idea isn't new, but its omnipresence does seem a little, I dunno, prophetic? I struggle over what this elevation of the printed word means. Is it sign that books are growing in importance? Or that they are becoming rarer, less read, less comprehensible and therefore more dangerous.

Tom Spurgeon has a holiday gift guide for comics/graphic novel lovers that is a must read. It includes Joe Sacco's Footnotes In Gaza which is certainly on my list and I think will end up featured prominently when the award lists are put together next year.

I just finished The Firefly Letters and Surrender Tree by Margarita Engle (way way behind on that one) and it occurred to me first, that she is amazing, and second that with these two and with My Havana on the horizon (next summer) I could actually put together a column of Cuban stories at some point next year. (I'm thinking summerish.) And that would be fabulous, wouldn't it? Actually recommending books about real Cuban history as opposed to, well, dramarama Cuban history (there was a lot of dramarama on this subject when I was in school). It's something to think about.

As to the actual January column (which is looming large) that will include books I wish I read in school on Hemingway and Shakespeare and some WWI because I ended up with three books on WWI for MG/YA readers and how often does that happen??? So it's an English/History class mash-up. I know, it sounds weird but I promise I'll make it work (or the books will be so good that no one will care... :)

And, in case you are wondering, Lisa Klein's Lady MacBeth's Daughter just might make me care about MacBeth (lost in a high school haze I'm afraid), and Caitlin Kiernan's The Red Tree is scaring the crap out of me in the creepy, building tension, sinister way that I love but man - Kiernan is just a relentlessly brutal writer. Not brutal in a blood and gore kind of way, but harsh and intense and, well, brutal in a most human way. All those emotions just laid out bare and you have to read them and see them and know them because that's who we are and how we are and Kiernan gets that and insists on writing about it and, well, she kinda kills me.

More on that one later.

The best Thanksgiving movie ever made is Home For the Holidays and if you haven't seen it then you should because it is funny and sad and romantic and dramatic and just plain good. Plus it stars Holly Hunter and I adore her - I'd worship her if she started her own church. (Look at how easily I give up my devotion.) I'm watching it right now because I have virtuously been wrapping and packing this evening - and even writing Christmas cards which include actual snapshots of my kid. Tomorrow I will write a wee bit about Wallace Stegner and Chris McCandless (damn him) and Jack Kerouac and my father.

Because everything I write, at least a little bit, is about him.

Next week look for several days of recommendations from the What a Girl Wants crew on books for girls. And there will be running commentary from me all over the place because that's just what I do. But great book buying ideas for sure. Maybe I'll post some tomorrow so you can all shop now. Hmmm. First, more Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr and bonus - Dylan McDermott! (And Charles Durning and Anne Bancroft both of whom are divine.) Wrapping, movie and sleep and then Stegner and then books for girls. Sounds like a plan.

After President Obama's speech on Afghanistan last night it seemed pretty timely to point everyone in the direction of a recent book on the country I read that blew my socks off. I hardly ever say this here, but really - you need to buy this book. Stones Into Schools by Greg Mortenson is exceedingly well written, easy to follow and does an excellent job of showing what life is like for the Afghani people living in the rural areas. I reviewed it for the new issue of Booklist (the Upfront Section, starred review). Here it is:

Mortenson’s best-seller, Three Cups of Tea (2009), introduced his commitment to peace through education and became a book-club phenomenon. He now continues the story of how the Central Asia Institute (CAI) built schools in northern Afghanistan. Descriptions of the harsh geography and more than one near-death experience impress readers as new faces join Mortenson’s loyal “Dirty Dozen” as they carefully plot a course of school-building through the Badakshan province and Wakhan corridor. Mortenson also shares his friendships with U.S. military personnel, including Admiral Mike Mullen, and the warm reception his work has found among the officer corps. The careful line CAI threads between former mujahideen commanders, ex-Taliban and village elders, and the American soldiers stationed in their midst is poetic in its political complexity and compassionate consideration. Using schools not bombs to promote peace is a goal that even the most hard-hearted can admire, but to blandly call this book inspiring would be dismissive of all the hard work that has gone into the mission in Afghanistan as well as the efforts to fund it. Mortenson writes of nothing less than saving the future, and his adventure is light years beyond most attempts. Mortenson did not reach the summit of K2, but oh, the heights he has achieved.

Stones is not a very political book - Mortenson does not dwell on the US invasion or the Soviet invasion or the recent civil war. He does talk about the history of specific villages and provinces to explain CAI's school building strategies there and discusses working with the US military on projects and the insanity of dealing with Afghanistan's bureaucracy. His goal is not to come down on one side or the other however, or to preach who is right or wrong. Rather he is focused on making positive change in the region, just as he has been focused on the same goal in Pakistan. And he's doing it - CAI is really doing it. Over 130 schools have been built in rural areas in the two countries and these are schools for girls and boys and the villages where they were built want the schools and support them and love them.

It is an experiment that has proven itself over and over again. It is working and not just because an American has come in and thrown money at the problem. It is working because the people want it to work and Mortenson knows this and so do the people who work with him. And if you ever wondered just who "those" people are in Afghanistan, or if "they" want us there or if it matters that we are there then you need to read about this project and its enormous success. You need to learn that yes, they are just like us.

Am I the only one who hears Sting singing "Russians" in the background right now?

I asked my grandmother once about the Japanese internment camps during WWII and she told me they were necessary - "we couldn't trust them," she said. "They weren't like us". For my mother's generation and partly my own it was the Russians who could not be trusted; they were the ones who were monumentally different. Then it became the Iraqis and Afghanis - or more generally, simply Muslims. There is always someone to collectively turn away from in fear. But Mortenson doesn't believe this and really, none of us should either.

Isn't that the part when the terrorists really win? (Or at least the part where someone says they do.)

We are in Afghanistan for three more years for sure, the President made that clear last night. So yeah, you can bitch about it and make inane comments about it at work or on the playground or standing around at parties. You can pretend not to care or make it all about Republicans and Democrats and get sucked into Obama vs Cheney discussions. Or you can read a book that will tell you something about who they are and what they hope for and how they are trying to change their world.

You can buy this book and strike a blow for good works. You can even donate to CAI. (Twenty dollars buys school supplies for one child FOR A YEAR.) Stones Into Schools is a good book, a really really good book. It made me believe in a lot of things so many of us have grown accustomed to not believing in anymore. We say hope all the time but this book really did give me hope. I can't think of anything better to celebrate this holiday season or a more important story to share.

Buy this book; plain and simple, just buy this book.

[Post pics from CAI site - the bottom pic is of porters carrying roof beams 18 miles to Korphe School. Pakistan. Clearly, these people are willing to work damn hard to get their school!]