As mentioned at our last meeting, I will feature an up and coming author on a weekly basis on the blog. This week's author is Dina Viergutz, a rising star in teen literature.
Brother-and-sister team Dina and Daniel Nayeri are happy to present their debut novel: Another Faust, The First of Another Series (Aug '09 by Candlewick Press). The book is a retelling of the Faustian Bargain, set in a modern NYC prep school. The series as a whole is designed to make works of classic literature accessible and fun for students through a modern, stylish re-imagining of each concept.
Dina and Daniel's
website, the Another Faust
trailer and their co-writing
video are now all available.
Her first novel, Another Faust, is the perfect back to school gift for any teenager:
In this sibling duo's debut, an unusual urban fantasy, five 10-year-olds (overachieving Victoria, homeless writer Christian, twins Bicé and Belle, and fame-hungry poet Valentin) disappear from their homes and are adopted by the beautiful, mysterious Madame Vileroy. Their families forget them, and they emerge in New York City five years later as the rich Faust siblings, joining the exclusive Marlowe School midyear. Each of the teens has been given a unique power (stopping time, mind-reading, bewitching beauty), though not all of them know the real cost. The novel's pace can be languid, though it picks up once the school year starts and the Fausts learn about the nature of evil and who Vileroy really is. The writing is clever and stylish ("Bicé left a trail of moments like this, when people came away from her feeling better somehow--the kind of moments that were the very opposite of all those little evils that Madame Vileroy left in her wake") and the dips in and out of reality almost conceal the characters' superficiality. It's an absorbing, imaginative read, with a tense climax. Ages 14-up.
"Ten ways to tell if you've accidentally woken up in a brand new house with the Devil as your Governess"
10. When you breathe on the glass doors of the Kwik-E-Mart it doesn't fog up, and you just don't find Itchy And Scratchy episodes funny anymore.
9. You find the idea of punting a small dog across the yard amusing.
8. You wake up with a start and go, "Oh. Em. Gee. Red Rum is MURDER backwards!!!!"
7. You freak out the first time you go to the bathroom, until someone reminds you that you had beet salad for dinner the night before...and THEN you remember the salad dressing was blood.
6. The only mail you ever get is addressed to "The Seventh Circle of Hell"...and it's only ever the OfficeMax catalog.
5. Your nanny demands that you call her a governess...and when you tell her no one says "governess" anymore, she threatens to break your hamster's finger. And when you tell her you don't have a hamster, she says, "Oh, you will be!" and cackles off before you can figure out what that means.
4. Your alarm clock sounds like a little girl laughing in a dark forest, and the snooze button is the volume up button.
3. Girl Scouts get your order wrong and instead of thin mints, they deliver great green globs of greasy grimy gopher guts...plus those crappy lemon ones.
2. Your chore list becomes stuff like, "Clean out the basement, but be evil about it," and "Dance, my soul-less puppet, Dance!"
1. When you invite people to your house they say, "You mean the house full of all the dead kids?" and you say, "I'm not dead." And then you go, wait a minute, maybe I didn't survive that plane crash...and then they interrupt and say, "Oh, no, you definitely survived. I just meant dead *inside*."
