Perfect Ten

Awhile back I heard a terrible rumor that Thirteen Plus one was the last book in the Winnie Series.  There was much sadness!  But then....then...I heard that Ten was coming out and it did!  It came out yesterday and I read it yesterday and there was much rejoicing!  I got to read two new Myracle books in one week!  I am a lucky gal, indeed!
This week was a very cool week because the coolest thing happened--- THE Lauren Myracle read my review of Shine and wrote on the blog!  That also speaks to how down-to-earth Ms. Myracle must be, to take the time to comment on a silly blog like mine!
As I have said in many of my Myracle reviews (and to a lot people in person) I find it totally bizarre that people compare Myracle to Judy Blume.  Myracle is so much better.  Her characters have so much more depth and her story lines are just head and shoulders above anything Blume has ever written.  I do give Blume credit for being a ground-breaking writer.  I get that.  She was the first to do what she did.  I understand.
Okay.  Look at it this way.  Ella Fitzgerald was before Judy (be sure to check the link, I'm not talking about Blume!)  Ella broke TONS of barriers.  She was extremely talented.  Heck, she is known as The First Lady of Song!  Judy came after her, and was compared to her, but there really is no comparison.  I mean Judy is just better.  The difference is though that Ella really was talented AND a ground-breaker.  Judy Blume?   Yes, a ground-breaker.   But if Ella and Judy were both singing today, they would be both be successful.  Would Blume be successful today?  No.  Take a look at some of her later books like Double Fudge, for example, and I am sure you will come to the same conclusion.
I know I am prejudiced because I simply don't like the nastiness of most of Blume's characters.  Why was Beverly Clearly able to create characters without GIANT chips on their shoulders?  Why is Lauren Myracle?
Yikes!
I got nasty, didn't I?  I am sorry...I know that I should be so anti-Blume.  I do appreciate her contributions and the stand she has taken against censorship.  I do.  I guess I just don't "get" characters that are mean for no reason.
This is why I am NOT a professional reviewer.
Back to Ten.
How I wish I would have had these when I was growing up.  And how I recommend these to everyone to read and to give to their daughters or granddaughters.  I expected Ten to be delightful and spot-on and it was.  It exceeded all my expectations.
I wish I could have been friends with Winnie!  When I go to do booktalks at schools, I am never surprised at all of the girls that tell me that same thing.
Excellent.

14 and a Half?

I am not sure, but I hope, hope, hope, hope, that with the new style of Thirteen Plus One, which only talks about half of Winnie's fourteenth year, instead of one book=one year, like the others, that the series will now have more books! Like there will be a book coming out soon (I hope, hope, hope, hope) that will chronicle the second half of Winnie's fourteenth year.

All of the comparisons to Judy Blume's books seem more and more absurd as this series goes on. These books just get better and better. There is not one Judy Blume book that can stand up to Thirteen +1.

Winnie and her friends are graduating from junior high, Winnie's older sister is going off to college. Lars is still being a dorkball, but Winnie is realizing she can be a dorkball, too!

Fantastic and funny and real. Who is Judy Blume again?

A Teenager

This is one of those series that just gets better as it goes along. Well maybe not...I mean all of them have been awesome! So it isn't like there was an improvement even needed, but maybe what I mean is that I am liking main character Winnie Perry even more as she grows up. Winnie is now officially a teenager in, da da da da....drumroll as we announce the shocking title THIRTEEN! I guess now I can officially add this book to my list of YA titles for the year since I see that many libraries have it in YA and, after all, it is about a thirTEEN year old. But this book is still great for tweens, too. Even though it has been banned a lot. So I guess it isn't great for all tweens. But maybe some. So maybe it is just good to say that parents who are worried about it should read it first if they want to monitor what their kid is reading if they are worried about the technical terms for body parts. There. Fair warning to all book banners.
I love how Winnie's voice has changed, gotten older, as the series goes on, but she is still Winnie. These books aren't preachy at all, which is a major plus. I can't wait for the next one to come in at the library!

When do I read what?

Sometimes, if you come late to a series, after many books in it are already out, it can be hard to figure out the order in which the books should be read, if you want to read them in order. And then there are those series in which even the order itself is hard to define because maybe the author wrote the first one second or something weird- like the whole Chronicles of Narnia thing. Then there's the whole prequel thing. And the companion books- like Stuck in Neutral and Cruise Control by Terry Trueman. Do you have to read Stuck in Neutral first? Because it was written first? Or how about a series that doesn't really say outright that the second book is a prequel, but it is, like Fire and Graceling, but if you read them in either order it is still kinda cool? Well one of the reasons why I liked Twelve is that Eleven was before it and Thirteen comes after it, so as long as you know that it all starts with Eleven, and you can count pretty well, you know in which order to read them! And if you don't know yet how to count up that high, then even though these books are easy to read, and found with younger kid fiction, you probably want to wait and read them until you are eleven or at least ten and so on up through the ages because for one thing, you'll enjoy it more because its so realistic and its probably what you're going through right then. And for another thing, if your folks are on the more conservative side, and you're younger, they might not like you reading books that talk about erections. I'm not saying that to make people ban these books or keep them out of people's hands, I'm just saying that these are the kind of books that some people raise a big fuss about in schools and libraries. Like Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret. Which is even mentioned in this series but, in my opinion, isn't anywhere near as good. I just think that most of Judy Blume's characters, with the exception of the ones in the early Fudge books are pretty mean. I know kids can be mean, but Blume writes as if nearly ever kid is a total dirtbag jerk. it makes me think that either she was or that kids really picked on her a lot and she's still out to get them. Something makes me think it could be both. Anyway, this whole series by Lauren Myracle is, as real reviewers say, a 'delight' plain and simple, man.

It could have been TRAGIC!

I almost read Twelve before Eleven! I had no idea Lauren Myracle had started the Winnie series at Eleven! I had Twelve in my hands, ready to read because two different people told me I needed to read the series. Then the lovely Kelly told me to read Eleven first and disaster was averted! In Eleven we meet Winnie, on the day of her eleventh birthday and in the spring of her fifth grade year. She has a best friend, Amanda and some other close friends as well. The book is written in twelve chapters, each one a month of Winnie's year. I really enjoyed Eleven even though it was painful to remember some parts of what its like to be that age. Winnie's life goes through many changes during the year and not all of them are easy for her. I love her belief that "The only people who get rah-rah over change are always parents and librarians, not kids. " and it made me think of the PLA or PaLA conference I attended in which we were invited to wear buttons that looked like sheriff's badges and said 'I'm a Change Agent.' Me, I guess that I'm kind of like Tupac and agree that 'I guess change is good for any of us'. But I also agree that it is hard to go through, at eleven or at any age.