Alex Award Winner

A brief history on the Alex Award: given annually to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults.

Bender, Aimee. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. New York, Doubleday. 2010.

Alex Award

Summary: On the eve of her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein takes a bite of her mother’s lemon cake and discovers she can taste her mother’s emotions.  Only George, her older brother’s best friend takes her seriously when she mentions this fact.

Reaction:  While the book was not a chore to read, I still feel rather ambivalent about the book.  Once Rose became a teenager, I thought the book might have more appeal to a teen audience.  I would recommend the book to eleventh and twelfth graders.

Evaluation:

• Would appeal to girls, not boys
• A book about emotions
• Storyline about brother is a bit of a stretch
• Partial love story
• Protagonist matures as story develops

What's next?

Next assignment is to read:

• one Teen Top Ten winner
• one VOYA perfect 10
• an Alex Award winner
• a MAE (Margaret Edwards) winner.

John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things is my selection for the Alex Award.  I have chosen Laurie Halse Anderson's Wintergirls for the Teen Top Ten winner,  Jacqueline Woodson's If You Come Softly is my MAE selection.  Francisco Storks  Marcelo in the Real World will be my read for VOYA perfect 10.

The assignment following this is to read a challenged book.  I am thinking about The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier.

After that I need to read two Margaret Edwards award winners and a realistic fiction book.  I would love to have recommendations for these.