(Image from Barnes & Noble)

Addison Schmeeter knows what normal is. Or maybe she doesn't, but at least she knows what it's not. It's not a mom leaving her kids for nights on end without letting them know where she is or when she'll be home. It's not a mom refusing to get out of bed for a week. It's not a 12-year-old doing all the cooking, cleaning, and shopping. It's not a parent acting like a child. The way Addie and Mommers live - nothing about it is normal. Addie knows their situation's unconventional (to say the least); she also knows she can't tell anyone about it, not if she wants to avoid ending up in foster care. Besides, Mommers needs her. Addie can't abandon her mother, no matter how crazy Mommers acts sometimes.

So, Addie hides the truth about her mother's violent mood swings - from her teachers at school, from her grandfather, and from her new friends across the street. Only Addie's ex-stepfather knows how bad Mommers gets sometimes, but no matter how hard he tries, he can't really help Addie. She knows he'd take her to live with him and her little half-sisters if Mommers would let him, but she won't. No way. She hates Dwight. And since he's not Addie's biological father, he can't legally force the issue. So Addie waits. And waits. For normal to make an appearance in her increasingly wonky life.

At least, Addie's in a new neighborhood, attending a new school. No one in this part of Schenectady knows her or Mommers. It's easier to hide. Until things get complicated. Suddenly, along with daily survival in an always-unpredictable home, Addie's got to deal with a friend's devastating secret, Dwight's new romance, and the intense stage fright that grabs hold of her every time she thinks about her upcoming violin solo. She'll have to face it all, while, at the same time, trying to predict what her mother will do next, where she will (or will not) show up, and how she's going to keep Mommer's erratic behavior a secret from prying eyes.

Although not as hard-hitting as other novels about children dealing with a parent's mental illness, Waiting for Normal is nonetheless affecting. The 2009 Schneider Family Book Award Winner by Leslie Connor takes a poignant look at one girl's brave fight for normality despite living with a mother whose manic-depression makes her life anything but. While I didn't love the book, I do think it's a well-written story about an important issue.

(Readalikes: Reminded me of Miles From Ordinary by Carol Lynch Williams, You Are My Only by Beth Kephart, and Small As An Elephant by Jennifer Richard Jacobson, and A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler)

Grade: C

If this were a movie, it would be rated: I waffled between PG and PG-13, but finally settled on the latter because of mild langauge, intense situations, candid discussions of female issues associated with puberty and references to homosexuality.

To the FTC, with love: I received a finished copy of Waiting for Normal from the generous folks at Katherine Tegen Books (an imprint of Harper Collins). Thank you!

I'm not sure why I thought Feed, a 2002 National Book Award finalist by M.T. Anderson, had to do with zombies. Maybe because of the title? Or maybe because the closer we creep to 2012, the more nervous I get about an undead apocalypse? Anyway, whatever the reason, I was totally wrong. No zombies shuffle their way through this book. Except, sort of, in a way, they do. Only they're not the slobbering, walking dead variety. Not exactly.

In this futuristic YA novel, almost anything has become possible. Spring Breakers can party on the moon. Jet-setting off to Mars is completely doable. And no one has to go offline. Ever. Feeds are transplanted straight into people's brains, allowing them to not just stand, but live their entire lives, at the very center of the information superhighway. A constant stream of content pours into their heads, meaning they never have to sound ignorant, never have to wonder about anything, never need to bother with learning or thinking at all. Ads flash through their minds continually, keeping them up-to-date on the latest fashion trends, celebrity breakups and cool, new gadgets. With a functioning feed, they can fit in anywhere, with anyone.

But what happens when a feed malfunctions? Titus is about to find out.

When the teenager and his friends go looking for a little lunar fun, they discover something: the Moon kinda sucks. In no time, their little excursion has gotten totally null. They're bored out of their feed-blasted minds. Then, Titus meets Violet Durn. Not only is Violet stunningly beautiful, but she's different. Like, somehow she seems more real than anyone else Titus has ever known. She's a little out of the loop, sure, but she's unique, something exciting to brighten his dull vacation. Titus convinces a reluctant Violet to come party with him and his friends at a night club his feed assures him is hot. He's having a good time (even if she's not) when the unthinkable happens - a raging doomsayer hacks into both their feeds, spamming them with angry extremist mumbo jumbo. In order to get their systems back online, both their feeds will have to be shut down. Immediately.

Without the noise in his head, Titus experiences an unsettling quiet, a kind of clarity he's never known before. Between the weird emptiness in his brain and Violet's odd observations about life (""Everything we've grown up with - the stories on the feed, the games, all of that - it's streaming our personalities so we're easier to sell to ...'" [97]), Titus literally does not know what to think. Even when the feed doctors reboot him and everything's back to normal, he's out of sorts, a feeling which only increases when Violet gives him some very disturbing news. Suddenly, Titus is asking questions he's never even considered before: What, in his life, is real? Who is he - his own person or some kind of product manufactured by the wily feed gods? If he didn't have his feed to stuff him full of info, would he be worth anything at all?

The allegorical Feed offers a chilling commentary on our Internet/Facebook/Twitter-obsessed times. In alternately frenetic (when he is on feed) and calmer (when he's off) chapters, Titus explores concerns that plague all of us with our increasingly virtual lives - realitiy vs. the online world; genuine human conversation vs. instant messaging, Facebook status updating, and Tweeting; true scholarship vs. copycat research; and developing authentic personality vs. allowing marketers to tell us who to be. The book's lesson isn't very subtle, but the plot's entertaining and Anderson's point comes across in a way that's both vivid and affecting. I can't say I loved Feed; I can say I appreciated it. And I haven't stopped thinking about it. Must be the zombie thing ...

(Readalikes: Reminded me a little of Girl Parts by John M. Cusick and, oddly, of the movie Wall-E)

Grade: B

If this were a movie, it would be rated: R for strong language

To the FTC, with love: I received a finished copy of Feed from the generous folks at Candlewick Press. Thank you!