In Jake Wizner's Spanking Shakespeare, 17-year-old Shakespeare Shapiro is 
writing his memoir. All seniors at his high school are required to do so as a senior project, but not all of them are the talented humorist that Shakespeare is. Shakespeare has a brother named Gandhi, so it seems clear that their parents were not into conventional, boring names for their children. Shakespeare suffers from the usual teen boy angst, the difference here being that he knows how to write about it in a very amusing, if coarse, style. This is not one to recommend to kids under, say, 16, but for older teens and young adults who don't mind Wizner's irreverence, this is a really funny book.
I finished Unwind, by Neal Shusterman, yesterday and now I'm reading it aloud to my boys. They never want me to stop reading! It's hard to find a place to stop because this is a really high energy book -- very exciting and fast moving. The story is set in the not-too-distant future (ipods and plasma screen televisions are from the characters' grandparents' time). In this dystopian world, kids are subject to being "unwound" when they are between the ages of 13 and 18. Once they reach age 18 they are safe, but if their parents or guardians decide to sign the order, they will be killed and all of their body parts will be harvested and given to other people who need them. The story follows three kids who are supposed to be Unwinds but who manage to escape. It's a pretty bizarre premise but it works well in this story. I really like that the author explores the issue of the value of human life from several perspectives. For example, in this world people who have unwanted babies are allowed to "stork" them -- that is, to leave them on someone's doorstep and just leave. If they are caught doing this, they must keep the baby afterall, but if they are not, the people who live in the house have to take care of the child. This was an imaginative, exciting book and I really enjoyed it!
I had never read the original Peter Pan, by J. M. Barrie, before this week. I was surprised to find that the Disney movie follows the original story pretty closely. 
There is a cold-blooded battle at the end of the book, though, that Disney (understandably) changed to a light-hearted contest between just Hook and Peter. In the book, the battle pits Peter and the lost boys against Hook and his pirates, and the children kill about 15 pirates. Barrie does not dwell on the violence but I was still rather shocked.
I found Barrie's prose remarkable not only in its imagination but also in its sophistication. Renaissance Learning gives this book a 7th grade reading level, and I found that the book earns this through its advanced vocabulary. Sadly, though, Barrie's view of girls and women was typical for his time, as evidenced by Wendy's limited options. For example, she takes no part in the story's final battle, and her role of "mother" to Peter and the boys pretty much dooms her to a life of cooking, cleaning, and looking after the needs of others, with no time for her own interests or pursuits.
