Oh My god - Science Fiction!!!!!

Not one but two science fiction titles in the same YA catalog (okay one is fantasy/sci fi but close enough for me.) It's interesting though that neither one is labeled as Sci Fi in the copy - Life As W e Knew It is listed as "teen fiction". I'll let you be the judge.........

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. Written in journal entries, this book follows Miranda and her family as they struggle to survive after a meteor knocks the moon closer to earth. There are tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic ash blocks the sun. Summer turns to winter and they huddle together in what was once the sun room of their home, using the wood stove for heat and eating stockpiled food and water. (Although if it's always winter melting snow shouldn't be a problem - so I'm not sure why water is limited.) It's about survival and hope in a new world and it sure sounds like sci fi to me (the whole meteor thing is kind of a dead giveaway), but whatever. I'm just interested in seeing what Pfeffer does with this.

Voices by Usula K. Le Guin. The town of Ansul used to be an artistic and scholarly mecca, full of libraries, schools, etc. but they were conquered by those who believed that reading and writing are acts punishable by death. Oracle House is home to the last undestroyed books (all hidden away) and the bad guys think it is full of demons. Memer, our teen heroine, lives there and learns there. Her life is changed when a poet and his wife arrive and stir up the people of Ansul - will they be brave enough to rebel?

Okay - it's an imaginary world but the totalitarian oppressive society thing reeks of sci fi and I have to wonder why this one is clinging to a fantasy tagline. It's Le Guin though, so who cares! And I love that it's about reading and writing. Very cool, and very very timely.

This Jazz Man by Karen Ehrhardt. A picture book that using the song "This Old Man" introduces several early jazz musicians like Mingus, Satchmo, etc. I'm a big fan of the music and I like the idea of what Ehrhardt (and illustrator RG Roth) have done here.

The Van Gogh Cafe by Cynthia Rylant. It's only 64 pages but sounds quite fun. Clara's dad owns the cafe where food cooks by itself and poems sometime foretell the future. The book is written as a collection of vigenettes and I want to see what Rylant does here. It could be a good title for readers who are intimidated by a full length novel.

An Unlikely Friendship by Ann Rinaldi. The story of Mary Todd Lincoln and her friend Elizabeth Keckley - who was black. Lincoln was a southerner (many people don't realize that while Abraham Lincoln was president his father-in-law and brothers-in-law were fighting for the Confederacy) so how she ended up with a close friend who was a former slave I have no idea. I'd like to know though, so I totally want to read this book.

Flora Segunda by Yasbeau Wilce. Okay, Flora lives in Crackpot Hall, a house with 11,000 rooms. She takes a shortcut one day and gets lost in her own house, finding a butler who was banished long ago and "a mind-blowing muddle of intrigue and betryal that changes her world forever."

Sounds like an absolute blast and the cover is gorgeous. I'm really looking forward to this one.