YOU
Charles Benoit



rating: 6.5 out of 10 "books"

“This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. You’re just a typical fifteen-year-old sophomore, an average guy named Kyle Chase. This can’t be happening to you. But then, how do you explain all the blood? How do you explain how you got here in the first place? There had to be signs, had to have been some clues it was coming. Did you miss them, or ignore them?” – Front Flap of YOU

Kyle Chase is the perfect example of so many of the kids you’ve seen or heard about in school systems who have sort of slipped through the cracks somewhere along the line. Between middle school and high school Kyle made some poor choices that landed him at the school for underachievers, Midlands High School, instead of Odyssey High School. He knows the mistakes he’s made, but can’t begin to fathom how to change them: the grades, the deadbeat friends, most of all his relationship with his parents. YOU spends a large portion of the story lost in Kyle’s anxiety over his wanting to change, and being perfectly apathetic to everything. Then there’s the issue of Kyle’s uncontrollable anger in the midst of all his other roller coaster-esque emotions. As Kyle puts it, “Life would be so much easier if they just left you alone, let you do what you wanted. You wouldn’t’ cause them any grief, you’d take care of yourself make your own food and get yourself where you needed to go.” That statement right there reminded me so much of how I thought towards my own parents, adults, authority figures, etc. at one point during my teenage life, so in that regard, I think Benoit did a really great job of connecting with his inner teenager. And why shouldn’t he of, having been a former high school teacher dealing with teens day in and day out?

Getting back to the story, things for Kyle continue in the above manner until he meets the new kid, smooth-talking confident Zack McDade. For all the weirdness that is Zack, Kyle can’t help but notice that Zack seems to have his life together. And maybe that’s why Kyle begins to hang out with Zack, and things start to pick up in Kyle’s life. But maybe that was Kyle’s biggest mistake. YOU is a fast-paced read that ends where it starts, with a shocking conclusion. It was definitely an emotional read for me, that had me switching between anger at Kyle’s attitude and choices, sympathy in his desire to change all that, pissed off at the character of Zack, and horrified at what happens at the end. If you want a story that will take no time to read, and maybe give you a little inside look at that kid you kind of know at school who has no aspirations and seems to purposely screw things up for himself (but you know is a good kid), check out YOU by Charles Benoit.

Love Drugged
James Klise



rating: 6.5 out of 10 "books"

What could be better than reading a book written by one of your own: I’m referring to a fellow librarian of course. In his first YA novel, Klise presents the possibility of a cure for homosexuality in the form of a little blue pill. And why shouldn’t it be a pharmaceutical company that invents the cure for such a “perversion of the human way of life,” (this is me quoting the opinion of countless people across the globe). For me however, I saw this story as one that presented a possible threat to the happiness of so many people who just so happen to be gay.

Love Drugged, is the story of Jamie Bates, a fifteen year old who just wants to be like any normal girl-obsessed teenage boy. The only problem is that he’s not: Jamie is gay. So when the should-be girl of his dreams, Celia, introduces Jamie to her father, the creator of a in-the-works gay cure called Rehomoline, Jamie, desperately seeking to live the life he feels he was meant to, has no choice but to steal some of the pills. However, as the pills take away his attraction to men; horrible side effects fill its place. Even worse, Jamie sees no advancement in his attraction to women, Celia included. The story follows Jamie as he makes bad choices, one after the other, and the people he will eventually hurt in his quest to be straight.

With the recent national “Things Will Get Better” campaign, I thought this book was fitting, especially since, within my own library system, there have been suicides due to unacceptance and ridicule because of sexual preference. Initially upon reading, I saw Rehomoline as a good thing; why shouldn’t people have a choice as to whether they want to be gay or not. But eventually, and as suggested further on in the book, why should that even be an issue? Why should a gay individual have to make that choice? It’s like an African American having the choice to become white, as if there were something wrong with being black. In an even larger scope, and something that I only realized after reading it further in this book, what if this drug did become available, and instead of people having the choice of whether or not they wanted to be “straight,” the drug was, for lack of a better word, weaponized, and forced upon homosexual individuals in order to mold them into some crazy idea of what a man or woman should be, or, more specifically, who they should love. In my opinion, that’s one less thing that needs to be made available to the likes of the ultra-religious homophobes. The worst part of this story is that the drug does nothing to “cure” homosexuality because although it may take away a man or woman’s attraction to the same sex, it does nothing to make a man or woman attracted to the opposite sex: it simply “suppresses the homosexual response in the brain,” thus destroying the one thing that separates man from all other creatures and turning people into a sort of zombie, devoid of any kind of human emotions relating to love.

Although this book and I started off pretty slow, I really came to like it, especially what it stands for and some of the issues and thought-provoking questions it brought up for me.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Graphic Novel)
By L. Frank Baum
(Adapted by writer Eric Shanower and artist Skottie Young)


rating: 6.5 out of 10 "books"

Like many people, I had seen the Judy Garland film production of “The Wizard of Oz,” but never actually picked up the original story written by L. Frank Baum. It was only after my boyfriend suggested I read the graphic novel version of the story that I even thought about the original text created so long ago.

The main story line is still the same: Dorothy is caught in a tornado in her Kansas farmhouse that transports her to a strange but beautiful land called Oz. When she discovers her house has fallen upon and killed the Wicked Witch of the East, she is hailed by all the “Munchkin” peoples, who were at the time enslaved by the Wicked Witch of the East. But this does not make her feel any the better, and longs to return home to her aunt and uncle in Kansas. Thus begins her journey to the Emerald City to see the Wizard of Oz, whom she has been told is her best chance of getting home.

While the yellow brick road and the scarecrow, tin man, and lion are all the same, there are some major differences between the Hollywood movie and the original story. For one, Dorothy’s shoes, which she confiscates from the Wicked Witch of the East, are silver not ruby red (a minor difference but so what!), but also the timeline of the story is different. Dorothy meets the colorful characters of the scarecrow, tin man, and lion, but the greatest part about these characters is that we are given their back stories. We not only find out the usual stories of the scarecrow wanting brains, the tin man a heart, and the lion courage, but we discover how these wishes came to be. For instance, I would never have known that the tin man (called the wooden tin man in the story), had actually once been a man, but when his ax was enchanted by the Wicked Witch of the East it caused him to chop off his limbs and body, and he had them replaced with tin. I thought the most interesting back story was that of the flying monkeys. Having only seen the movie, I thought they were pure evil, doing the bidding of the Wicked Witch of the West, but it turns out they were not that way at all, that there was a lot we did not know from just watching the film.

The City of Emeralds was also very different. When Dorothy and the rest of the group arrive at the city gates, they must wear spectacles when entering the city because they are told the brightness of the city could blind them. Everything in the city is bright green, even the people. They end up staying in the palace of the Wizard of Oz for several days, because although Oz has agreed to see them, he will only see one person a day. Oz only agrees to help them if they can all ensure the destruction of the Wicked Witch of the West, who is very different from the movie character herself. The Wicked Witch of the West is terrified of the dark as well as water and only has one eye. There is really no mention of the Wicked Witch of the East and West having been sisters, and it seems the only reason she wants Dorothy and her friends destroyed is because they are in her territory and unfit to be slaves. I don’t think it had anything to do with Dorothy accidentally killing the Wicked Witch of the East. Other differences occur involving wolves, crows, bees, a city made of china, etc., that make for a pretty entertaining story.

Overall, it was a pretty enjoyable read. It was a bit repetitive at times. Between the characters repeating that if they had a brain/heart/courage they could do this, or because they didn’t have it (a brain/heart/courage) they could not do whatever, it got a little annoying. If I had been more interested in the story matter, I probably could have knocked this graphic novel out in one sitting. I found the background on writer L. Frank Baum a bit more interesting than the actual story. I never knew that he had actually written thirteen sequels to “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” or that after the rights to the story were made public after the 1950’s, there have been tons of adaptations. However, I have to take into account the adaptation itself when it comes to rating this story. The story, combined with the awesome drawings interpreted by Skottie Young, led me to the 6.5 rating I landed at. If you are looking for something short to read with a lot of really cool pictures, I’d recommend this story. Or, if you are a huge fan of the Wizard of Oz, then this graphic novel is definitely for you.