The Emerald Atlas, by John Stephens, for Timeslip Tuesday

I read The Emerald Atlas, by John Stephens, way back in April of 2011...and meant to review it for a Timeslip Tuesday...but it never happened.  Now the sequel, The Fire Chronicle is out in the world, and nominated for the Cybils in Middle Grade Sci Fi/Fantasy, and, in as much as I'm one of the first round panelists, I need (and want) to read it!

So I just went back and read The Emerald Atlas for a second time.  It's the sort of very complicated, twisty story that is clearer upon rereading, and I found myself enjoying it considerably more than I had the first time around.

It's the story of three children (Kate, Michael, and Emma) taken from their parents when they were little, and sent from orphanage to orphanage.  At last they end up as the only children in a mysterious old house by a mysterious lake...a house that just happens to be home to a wizard.

And Kate, Michael and Emma are off on an adventure that takes them back in time fifteen years.  There in the past they must:

a.  save all the townsfolk from an evil enchantress and her legions of monsters
b.  figure out the secrets of the magic book, the Emerald Atlas of the title, that is the key to time travel (the magician knows lots, but isn't telling)
c.  stay alive, preferably not in the prison cells of the dwarves
d.  have faith in each other, and in their parents--because the hope that someday they'll be a real family again is sometimes all that keeps them going
e.  stay alive some more (tricky, what with all the monsters, wolves, breaking dams, and evil witchcraft that fills the story)

It's a busy, complicated story, and this is a drawback--there's a lot of explaining that needs doing, and though this is welcome, it's sometimes a bit jarring when tense moments become opportunities for exposition.   And there's a whole lot that isn't explained, which is frustrating to both the children and to me, the reader. 

The time travel, however, makes pretty good sense (though I won't go into the details, because it would take too long to explain).  In fact, were I to assign points to authors who make nice use of time travel to advance the plot of fantasy quest stories, adding mystery and intellectual complexity, I would give John Stephens quite a good score! 

Despite this, I felt the story as a whole was somewhat sprawling and unwieldy--perhaps because my own personal taste doesn't really run to books with lots of rushing around from one dangerous situation to another.  However, I am currently having a similar problem with Rick Riordan's latest, The Mark of Athena, which my nine year old read straight through with loving care and which is taking me much longer.  So I feel reasonably confident in suggesting that younger readers, with more frisky minds, might enjoy The Emerald Atlas more than I did back in 2011.

This second time though was much more enjoyable for me--knowing, more or less, what was happening freed my mental energies enough so that I could care more for the characters.  And now I can look forward to The Fire Chronicle in a cheerfully anticipatory spirit!

The best fantasy books for kids from 2012, according to Kirkus

Kirkus has just released its list of the best children's books of 2012, and there are a number of fine fantasies on it--



A GREYHOUND OF A GIRL, by Roddy Doyle
THE VENGEKEEP PROPHECIES, by Brian Farrey (I haven't read this one myself, but it does look good)
ON THE DAY I DIED, by Candace Fleming




IN A GLASS GRIMMLY, by Adam Gidwitz
SON, by Lois Lowry
THE SPINDLERS, by Lauren Oliver

COLD CEREAL, by Adam Rex

SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS, by Laura Amy Schlitz

THE SEVEN TALES OF TRINKET, by Shelley Moore Thomas

This week's round-up of middle grade sci fi/fantasy from around the blogs (Nov. 18, 2012)

Welcome to another week of what I found in my blog reading of interest to fans of mg sff!  Please let me know if I missed your post.

The Reviews:

Beswitched, by Kate Saunders, at Book Nut

The Boneshaker, by Kate Coombs, at Random Musings of a Bibliophile

The Brightworking, by Paul B. Thompson, at Semicolon

The Coming of the Dragon, by Rebecca Barnhouse, at Chachic's Book Nook

Constable and Toop, by Gareth P. Jones, at The Book Zone

The Cup and the Crown, by Diane Stanley, at Book Nut 

Darkbeast, by Morgan Keyes, at Semicolon

The Drowned Vault, by N.D. Wilson, at Book Nut 

Gravediggers: Mountain of Bones, by Christopher Krovatin, at Geo Librarian

Here Where the Sunbeams Are Green, by Helen Phillips, at My Precious

The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom, by Christopher Healy, at Jean Little Library

Horten's Incredible Illusions, by Lissa Evans, at Challenging the Bookworm

Ivy's Ever After, by Dawn Lairamore, at 300 Pages

Liesl and Po, by Lauren Oliver, at A Library Mama

The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan, at Tales of the Marvelous

Malcolm at Midnight, by W.H. Beck, at Page in Training

Margaret and the Moth Tree, by Brit Trogen and Kari Trogen, at Book Nut 

Max Quick: The Pocket and the Pendant, by Mark Jeffrey, at Time Travel Times Two 

Ordinary Magic, by Caitlen Rubino-Bradway, at Leaf's Reviews

The Ordinary Princess, by M.M. Kaye, at The Book Smugglers

Princess of the Silver Woods, by Jessica Day George, at Karissa's Reading Review (labeled YA, but I've always thought George's princess books were perfect for upper mg)

Sammy Feral's Diaries of Weird, by Eleanor Hawkin, at Nayu's Reading Corner

The Seven Tales of Trinket, by Shelley Moore Thomas, at Semicolon

The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, by Nikki Loftin, at Charlotte's Library

The Spindlers, by Lauren Oliver, at Challenging the Bookworm and Lily's Book Blog

Tilly's Moonlight Garden, by Julia Green, at Sharon the Librarian

Whatever After: Fairest of All, by Sarah Mlynowski, at Semicolon

The Whispering House, by Rebecca Wade, and A Greyhound of a Girl, by Roddy Doyle, at Semicolon

Authors and Interviews

Helen Phillips (Here Where the Sunbeams are Green) at From the Mixed Up Files

A video clip of M.T. Anderson talking about  Wardrobes and Rabbit Holes: A Dark History of Children’s Literature can be seen at Fuse #8

Other Good Stuff

The books for 2013's World Book Night have been announced--representing mg sff are The Phantom Tollbooth and The Lightning Thief.

Hobbit tourism in New Zealand, at the Guardian

Goblin Secrets, by William Alexander, wins the National Book Award

U is for Unicorn, with Katherine Roberts, at Scribble City Central

And just because nothing says Thanksgiving like cute hedgehogs (?), here's a festive dessert idea from The Cupcake Blog:

The Raven Boys, by Maggie Steifvater (a reaction, not a review)

I really, really liked The Raven Boys, by Maggie Steifvater (Scholasitc, YA, Sept. 2012). 

I'm cheerfully assuming that anyone reading this has already read reviews and summaries; since I don't feel like doing one myself, I'm skipping straight to my personal reaction as a fan of character-driven fantasy.

And boy, did The Raven Boys please me with its brightly sharp-edged cast of central characters, who are (like so many people) complicated, uncertain, variously lovable and not so much so.  Blue is the daughter of small town Virginia psychics, living in house of women's magic.  The four Raven boys are students at the ultra posh prep school that sits uneasily in town, each boy with his own complex back story.   The tangled-ness of self and other, the uneasy negotiations of loyalty and friendship, and the sense of precipices of hurt waiting to happen, combined with the fact that the majority of them are lovable, was enthralling.

These characters drive the story.  Sure, there's a plot with people racing around on a quest of great magical antiquity, and yes, there is a mystery,  and supernatural-nesses, and a strong sense of place, and all that was good, but I felt at some level that it was there so that the characters could exist.   Although I enjoyed the gradual em-piling of magic upon reality (and it was fascinating, interesting magic), that part of the story seemed to give the characters room to create themselves, rather than dictating their actions in external, quest-related, terms. Which is to say--the interpersonal relationships (which are by no means romance focused, although that's there) come first in reading primacy, followed by the actions involved in achieving the object of the quest. Which is just fine with me.

I didn't quite love The Raven Boys,  because I was too anxious about people getting hurt.   It isn't a safe and cozy book, and I generally choose comfort reads over wrenching ones.   However, and this is a new thing, I am distressed to find that when I am confronted with vulnerable teenaged boys, I react as a mother (although my oldest son is still not quite 13....).   I fought it hard while reading this--asking myself which of the boys I'd have a crush on, and that sort of thing--but it was no use.  I felt maternal and wanted to hug them.  So utterly annoying.

I think that this is one that I will like lots more (perhaps even to the point of love) when I re-read it after I've read to the end of the series.  At that point I'll know the ending (unless Maggie Steifvater makes mean author choices), and I'll know all the things that we aren't being told, and perhaps I'll get to see Blue and a Raven boy or two happily settled into a peaceful life together or some such, and I won't have to spend my reading energy on fretting...

Just for the record:  out of Maggie Steifvater's books to date, this is only the second one that I really liked.   The first being Ballad, which is lovely (here's my review), and which I highly recommend even to those who haven't read the (less personally appealing) first book, Lament.   I couldn't finish The Scorpio Races, because it was too anxious, and the Wolves series just didn't interest me.


disclaimer:  review copy received from the publisher

The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, by Nikki Loftin

The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, by Nikki Loftin (Razorbill, 2012, middle grade).

Imagine the most beautifully breathtaking school you can--with a playground that sends a siren song into any child's heart, a cafeteria designed for fine dining, a school where each child has a dish of candy in their desks that never gets empty, and all seems designed to make every student happy....

That's Splendid Academy, where Lorelie and her brother are being sent; it's approved of by her new step-mother (not a universally welcome addition to her family).   And although sweet as all get out on the outside, Splendid Academy has a rotten core.  A kind of deadly, magical, rotten-as-all-get-out core....

Because all the lovely food, bags and plates and bowls of delicious food, pressed upon the students by the beautiful teachers, isn't for the benefit of the children growing fatter every day.

Lorelie, though, is not like other students.  She has a dark secret of her own, one that ironically will be her armour during the days can come, as, bit by bit, the horror of her new school unfolds.

I don't know if I would have seen it myself, because I can be Dim at times, but this is a retelling of Hansel and Gretal--and a good one too (not that I've ever read any book length retellings of it, but still).   The whole package of Splendid Academy makes a believable whole, magic and all....and Lorelie's own journey of discovery, the actions she took and her motivations, all made sense to me.

Her older brother was not, as one might expect, the "Hansel Figure."  In fact, the older brother was pretty much a non character, and the part of Hansel was played by another classmate, Andrew, a boy who arrived at Splendid Academy already overweight.   Loftin does, I think, a fine job with Andrew, avoiding fat kid stereotypes and making him an insightful, sympathetic character who does not miraculously have to become thin in order to be a valued, attractive, person.

It's a pretty dark book (about as dark as the original fairy tale), but it's a darkness of gradually building horror rather than grotesque violence.   I don't think, though, that the horror overwhelms the story.  Lorelie's strength of character, and determination to do the right thing, balances things out.   I liked it quite a bit.

(personal note:  I kept misreading Splendid Academy as Splenda (tm) Academy.  Which I thought was rather metaphorically apt.....)

Mal and Chad--The Biggest, Bestest Time Ever! for Timeslip Tuesday

Mal and Chad--The Biggest, Bestest Time Ever!, a graphic novel by Stephen McCranie, is one whose kid appeal is tremendous--my nine year old pounced on it, read it in a single sitting, and it disappeared for several weeks into the circle of his reading friends at school (which includes both boys and girls), who all liked it lots (it's perfect for nine year olds).    When I finally got it back, I enjoyed it very much myself!

Mal (short for Malcolm) is a kid genius who's determined to keep his super intelligence a secret--he doesn't want to be sent off to college.  So he builds his rocket ship and time machines off in the woods, works hard on answering questions in school with age appropriate language, and tries to keep it a secret that Chad, his very cute dog, has been taught to talk.

A class assignment on "What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up" inspires Mal to use his time machine (a modified elevator) to travel back to the time of the dinosaurs to see if he wants to become a paleontologist (although the author says archaeologist....a pet peeve of mine).   The machine works, and Mal and Chad encounter dinos--including a very sweet baby--and they return unscathed, sort of.  The elevator gets charged by a dino right as they are leaving, and crash lands in a vacant lot.

The self-proclaimed smart boy of Mal's class sees it, and figures out it's a time machine---and uses it...with disastrous results.  A hole is ripped in space-time, and unless Mal can set things right, the girl he's crushing on will be trapped with the dinos forever...

It is a good, amusing, story with tremendously engaging characters.  Chad is now one of my favorite fictional dogs; though I myself am not a dog person, I could not resist the cuteness of his puppy eyes pleading expression (used very effectively on Mal to let him play with the baby dinosaur).  The dynamics of school life are also rather appealingly presented--Mal's struggles to appear normal, and his struggle to get the attention of the girl he's crushing on are rather moving.

I will be buying the next two Mal and Chad stories for Christmas presents, with perfect confidence that they will be welcomed and enjoyed.

Home Front Girl: A Diary of Love, Literature, and Growing Up in Wartime America

Home Front Girl: A Diary of Love, Literature, and Growing Up in Wartime America (Chicago Review Press, November, 2012, Young Adult) is the actual diary of Joan Wehlen Morrison (1922-2010), beginning in 1937, when she is fourteen, and continuing to February, 1942.    Joan Wehlen was clearly destined to become a writer--her diary entries, transcribed by her daughter after her death, are funny, coherent, thoughtful, and diverting.

Joan starts her diary as a high school sophomore in Chicago, at a time when the country was recovering (mentally and materially) from the Great Depression.   Her journal entries are full of the everyday doings of a bright, friendly girl--thoughts on her teachers, classmates, a bit about whether she's thin, what she thinks about religion, watching her paramecium inexplicably die in biology, her work on the school paper, boys she's crushing on....and darker things too.  She is tested for tb, and found to be on the borderline of having it--she must periodically have her chest x-rayed.   And even in 1937, the shadow of war haunts her nightmares. 

As the war in Europe progress, and as Joan grows up, she (naturally) moves beyond the light-hearted school girl she was.   Though I found these years less immediately entertaining, from a social history point of view, they were interesting as all get out.  I was powerfully reminded that it was not clear in the late thirties in the US that this was a war that we were inevitably going to have to fight. Joan is terrified by the thought of it, thinks of Winston Churchill as "pig face," and rejects patriotic fervor.   And then, only a few months before Joan puts down her diary, Pearl Harbor is bombed.  There's a forced brightness to these entries, with Joan talking more about boys than about the war, but under that gloss, it's clear that it's filling her mind.

This is one I'd give in a second to anyone who loves historical school girl stories and stories of home front girls--I was variously reminded of Daddy-Long-Legs, Betsy-Tacy, and Rilla of Ingleside.   If you like those books, you will almost certainly join me in loving Joan's high school diary entries with a passionate intensity, laughing out loud at both her words and her doodles, and sharing with her the sometimes painful process of growing up.  I wish I could have been her friend, because she really does sound like a kindred spirit:

"Sometimes I wonder if I'm really laughing at the things I say or if I mean them.  I catch myself saying things and find myself grinning at something--inside I mean." (page 23).

Here's one example of a passage that made me laugh out load--Joan studying biology on her bus ride home in 1938:

"Then I went back to the difference between man and animals.  Very slight, it seems.  I was testing myself out to see if I was human.  Seeing if my thumb was opposable (by wiggling it) and if I had a definite chin (thrusting it out) and if my great toe was opposable (very hard in shoes). By this time, the man next to me also seemed to need proof that I was human and took quite an interest in my experiments.  In most points I seemed human so I gave up and went back to one-celled animals.  Man went back to his magazine" (page 77).

Joan may be naive in some ways, as so many young teenagers are, but she is not the product of a "more innocent time."  In one searing entry written in 1940 (pages 140 to 146), she reflects on her generation--how their parents, coming out of WW I "...had the awful feeling of being "timed"-that they must hurry and gobble life or it would leave them."  How "...though most of us were loved, we were, most of us, lucky not to be abortions."   Then came the Great Depression, and Joan tells how her family, like so many others, lost their house and became poor.  And how those lean years shaped the physical health of her generation.

"Oh you, my generation! --we were  lovely lot!  Sharp minds -- arguing all the time and brittle bodies and even more brittle laughter--and all the time knowing that we were growing up to die.  Because we weren't fooled, you know.  All through those bright-colored years of adolescence we knew we were growing up to disaster.  For at least four years--well, three, before it happened, we knew it was coming.  Some sort of inner sense of war lay upon us." (page 143)

And having read Joan's descriptions of her nightmares of war, I believe her.

In one of her last entries, she says that she thinks she's written her diary "with the intention of having it read someday....I rather like the idea of a social archaeologist pawing over my relics" (page 229). And indeed, this is one I'd recommend with great conviction to social historians. 

I just really truly wish she'd kept on writing in her diary!  The ending comes too soon (and I was expecting from the title that we'd see more actual "home front-ness), and though we know, from the introduction her daughter wrote, that Joan went on to a happy marriage, three kids, and a career as a writer, still, I would have liked more of her own words...and I would really have liked her thoughts on the 1950s and the Cold War!  She did, however, go on to write, with her son, a book about the sixties--From Camelot to Kent State: The Sixties Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It (1987).

Review copy gratefully received from the publisher.  Will be kept for re-reading and sharing.

(I've thrown this into this week's Non-Fiction Monday round-up, hosted today by The Flatt Perspective)

This week's round-up of middle grade fantasy and sci fi (Nov. 11, 2012)

Welcome to this week's round up of what I found in my blog reading of interest to fans of middle grade sci fi/fantasy.  Please let me know if I missed your post!

First--please enter my giveaway of Philip Pullman's retellings of Grimms Fairy Tales--it's a lovely book! (giveaway ends next Wednesday night)

The Reviews:

13 Hangmen, by Art Art Corriveau, at Charlotte's Library

Above World, by Jenn Reese, at Semicolon

The Black Shard, by Victoria Simcox, at Geo Librarian

Caught, by Margaret Peterson Haddix, at Semicolon

Constable and Toop, by Gareth P. Jones, at Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books and My Favorite Books

Dark Lord: The Early Years, by Jamie Thomson,  at Good Books and Good Wine

Deadly Pink, by Vivian Vande Velde, at Book Nut

Demoneater, and Demoncity, by Royce Buckingham, at Awesome Indies

Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities, by Mike Jung, at Books Beside My Bed

Ghost Knight, by Cornelia Funke, at Sonderbooks

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente, at Fantasy Literature

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, by Catherynne M. Valente, at Charlotte's Library

Goblin Secrets, by William Alexander, at Bookshelves of Doom

Gustav Gloom and the People Taker, by Adam-Troy Castro at Book Nut

Here Where the Sunbeams are Green, by Helen Phillips, at books4yourkids and Jean Little Library

Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms, by Lissa Evans, at Semicolon

In a Glass Grimmly, by Adam Gidwitz, at Reads For Keeps 

Island of Silence, by Lisa McMann, at Semicolon

Joshua Dread, by Lee Bacon, at Random Acts of Reading

Kingdom of the Wicked (Skulduggery Pleasant Book 7), by Derek Landy, at SFCrowsnest

Mira's Diary: Lost in Paris, by Marissa Moss, at Ms. Yingling Reads

The Necromancer, by Michael Scott, at Book Sake

The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate, at Book Nut
and One Librarian's Book Reviews

The Peculiar, by Stefan Bachmann, at bewitched bookworms

The Spindlers, by Lauren Oliver, at Literary Rambles (scroll down) (giveaway)

Starry River of the Sky, by Grace Lin, at Random Musings of a Bibliophile and Nerdy Book Club

Secrets at Sea, by Richard Peck, at GreenBeanTeenQueen

The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, by Nikki Loftin, at Semicolon

The Six Crowns, by Allan Jones and Gary Chalk, at Ms. Yingling Reads (scroll down)

Snow in Summer, by Jane Yolen, at Charlotte's Library

Splendors and Glooms, by Laura Amy Schlitz, at Book Nut 

Summer and Bird, by  Catherine Catmull, at Wandering Librarians

Twice Upon a Time, by James Riley, at Semicolon

The Unwanteds, by Lisa McMann, at Akossiwa Ketoglo
and vikki vansickle

Winterling, by Sarah Prineas, at Nayu's Reading Corner

Four animal fantasies at Charlotte's Library

And five mg fantasy "quick picks" over at Book Aunt


Authors and Interviews

 Helen Phillips (Here Where the Sunbeams are Green) at books4yourkids 

A conversation with Philip Pulman at Mother Jones (via Educating Alice)

Adam Gidwitz (Through a Glass Grimmly) at The Detroit News


Other Good Stuff

Philip Pullman reads The Three Snake Leaves, one of the Grimm stories he retells in his new book, at the BBC (don't forget to enter my giveaway!)

T is for Troll, with Katherine Langrish, at Scribble City Central

The Graveyard Book is becoming a graphic novel

Who knew that Tenniel made an Alice chessboard? If you act quickly, you can buy a reproduction....

Animal fantasy fun

My reading is currently outstripping my posting, so, even though I really do like to do things one book-one post, today I am clearing the decks of a few of animal fantasies that were nominated for the Cybils in middle grade sci fi/fantasy.  I've organized them by animal type.

Dogs

There are not that many fantasy dogs. possibly because dogs are not traditionally associated with the mysterious, dark, night, or possibly because dogs have such open and transparent personalities (compared to cats) that they lend themselves less well to magical intrigue (wolves and foxes, of course, are a different story).

In my Cybils reading to date (83 out of 151 books nominated) I have encountered only one book featuring dogs-- Pipper's Secret Ingredient, by Jane Murphy and Allison Fingerhuth, and even this one is not a fantasy because it has magic, but it's a fantasy because dogs are doing very human things.  The heroine of the story is a dog named Pipper who has an incredibly popular cooking blog...and a case of writer's block.   At last, with the help of her doggy  friends (introduced in an info-dump early on) inspiration strikes, and she sets off on a trip around the world, searching for the secret ingredient that makes for a perfect treat.

It's charmingly illustrated,  and I enjoyed the inclusion of pages and snippet's from Pipper's blog.   It is, due to the nature of the plot, somewhat episodic--Pipper in Egypt, Pipper in Paris, Pipper in Peru, but there is a subplot that links things together involving a dastardly food tycoon's efforts to find out what Pipper might discover.  He sets a bumbling dog spy on her trail, adding humor and a bit of excitement to the story. 

This is one to give to readers who like cooking and dogs; I'm not sure it has much more general child appeal, especially since the dogs are grown-ups. 

(review copy received from the author for Cybils purposes)

Pigeon

Ravens and crows seem to be showing up everywhere on covers these days, but the humble pigeon has a place in fantasy as well. 

Signed by Zelda, by Kate Feiffer, is the story of a New York pigeon and its three human friends--Lucy, who's been dragged unwillingly away from Georgia by her parents, Nicky, the boy who lives in the room above hers, spending lots of time jumping off his bed while he's in time-out (which is often), and Nicky's Grandmother Zelda, who lives even further up the building.

This is fantasy because Pigeon actually communicates with the humans, but really it's a mystery that revolves around Lucy's expertise in handwriting analysis, and the disappearance of Grandmother Zelda under shady circumstances.  Definitely more appeal for mystery lovers than for fantasy lovers.

I myself liked the handwriting analysis aspect of the book lots (there are little snippets of handwriting analysis instruction),  and Pigeon added interest, but the family dynamics that are at the heart of the book didn't work for me.   I couldn't believe in the choices Nicky's father makes (they are bad ones), and the sudden forgiveness that happens at the end. 

This is a multicultural one--Lucy's family is from India, and though she's small on the cover, she's convincingly depicted:

Bunnies

Mr. and Mrs. Bunny--Detectives Extraordinaire!, by Polly Horvath, is really truly animal fantasy (though there is also a mystery, it's not a mystery to the reader, who sees everything unfolding).  Human girl Madeline is the practical member of her family--her parents are hippies, living a live of spiritual vegetarian flakiness, and she's the one that changes the light bulbs.  When her parents are kidnapped by evil foxes (it's a long story),  Madeline is fortuitously taken in by two eccentric bunnies, who, though scattered in their thinking, and operating primarily by instinct, have decided to become detectives.    Clearly their first case must be to find Madeline's parents....

The world of the bunnies mirrors the human world, and Mr. and Mrs. Bunny are tremendously appealing (perhaps more so for an older reader, who finds the bickerings and humorous accommodations of old married couples more easy to relate to!).  Though the humor was slightly one-note, it was still very diverting. 

(Goodness--I just checked the Amazon reviews of this one, and it managed to upset a number of people who take deliberate, over-the-top caricature to be deliberate propaganda against all that is decent.  Many were upset that Madeline's hippy father uses the word "crap" early in the book (I didn't register it), and indeed, it's a word I wish wasn't in my own kids' vocabulary, and I'm a bit surprised the editors let it pass).

Mountain Lion  

Wobar and the Quest for the Magic Calumet, by Henry Homeyer has an ancient mystery--a lost Native American silver peace pipe (the calumet of the title); a ghost--the Revolutionary War soldier who was supposed to give it to George Washington; a foundling boy named Wobar who was born with a mustache, and a mountain lion named Roxie with whom he communicate telepathically.

Together, Roxie and Wobar must make their way from upstate New York to New Orleans to find the calumet and set it off on its path to bringing about world peace.

The adventures of the mountain lion and the boy are interesting--in particular, the logistical difficulties of being a small boy (with a moustache) travelling with a mountain lion are enjoyably explored.  But I was never able to suspend my disbelief enough to thoroughly enjoy this one.  I'll say straight up that the mustache threw me off lots--it didn't advance the plot, and I found it grotesque.  Likewise, I didn't see why the main character had to be called "Wobar"--it's never explained why he's named that, or who he really is.  On top of that,  the calumet was very much a MacGuffin.  This sort of thing makes it hard for me to suspend disbelief enough so as to enjoy a book. 

I think this is a case where if you like the cover, with all the strange and exiting things that happen depicted in a somewhat unsophisticated style, you might well like the book.

(review copy received for Cybils purposes)

Snow In Summer, by Jane Yolen

What if Snow White wasn't a princess, but just a girl, named Snow in Summer, loved by her papa and mama and growing up good and beautiful in the mountains of West Virginia in the mid-20th century?  And what if her mama died, and her papa was so grief stricken he couldn't spare a thought for his little girl anymore...but was ensnared by the magic of a wicked woman, who became the poor child's evil stepmother?

Snow in Summer, by Jane Yolen (Philomel, 2011) is that story, and these twists of time and place and character make for a fascinating retelling.   It's a dark one, starting off right away in sadness with the death of Summer's mother, and working its way slowly and inexorably into horror, as Summer's evil stepmother cuts the girl off from the rest of the community, punishes her horribly, and finally, plans to kill her.  For the stepmother's magic is dark indeed, and it's a greedy, hungry magic that feeds on young life....

Summer herself is aware that things are horribly wrong, but can't seem to find any way out of the maze of cruelty that's been woven around her.  It's not until she runs for her life that she finds a refugee--in the home of a family of small German immigrant brothers-- and that isn't until page 195.  

It wasn't one I loved.  I found Summer a somewhat distant, unemotional narrator, and I never connected quite enough with her to care all that much.  On top of that,  I couldn't help but feel that the last bit of the book was rushed (we don't get enough time to really get to know the Seven Dwarf equivalents), and the romance at the end (not even a romance) was unsatisfactorily tacked on.   But I did appreciate the freshness of  Jane Yolen's reworking, and can recommend it to fans of fairy tales on that basis--it made a lovely change from the faux medieval that's so ubiquitous in retellings (though I think I'll always love those medievally ones best!).

Those looking for fairy tale retellings with pretty dresses should look elsewhere (they will find the pretty cover has deceived them), but older middle-school kids (seventh graders or so) who are almost ready to move on to darkish, more Young Adult books may well enjoy it.  

Note on age:  The lust (verging on attempted rape) of the teenaged boy who has been charged with killing Summer pushes this, in my mind, out of the range of younger readers.

A sample of other reviews:  Semicolon, Leaf's Reviews, and Book Aunt

Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm, retold by Philip Pullman (plus giveaway)

Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm: a New English Version, by Philip Pullman (Viking Adult, November 12, 2012).

This is the first time I've ever written in a happy spirit about a book I haven't finished, and I feel absolutely no shame at all about not having read to the end!  I'm in no rush to hurry up and read it cover to cover--instead, I'm enjoying revisiting all my old friends, reading my favorite stories out loud to my children, and relishing Pullman's fresh and friendly story-telling.

He is an author who isn't afraid to translate "pisspot" (Pißput) as "pisspot," one who isn't afraid to let the players in the stories speak with contractions (though he plays it fairly straight--he doesn't use a specifically local speech, or the repetitive formulae of oral storytelling, as Alan Garner, for instance, does in his retellings).  And my children are enjoying the experience very much as well, much more so than the stiffer versions in my own childhood Grimm.

I didn't have enough enough books as a child living overseas, so I was forced to re-read those (relatively) few books I had  and that included Grimm.  Though I would periodically force myself to read straight through, I had my favorites, of course--The Golden Bird, Jorinda and Joringel, The Goose Girl...stories I knew pretty much by heart. 

Reading Pullman's retellings was like coming home to find the walls of my house repainted--fresh and bright and like new again, with the added bonus of some new rooms that I'd never been in before.

 This isn't a book specifically for children--there are no illustrations, no sanitization--though many children will enjoy reading it; instead there is lots of fascinating commentary on the stories.  This isn't one to put on the kids' bookshelf, in their room upstairs, but it's one that I'd shelve happily in the living room library, and not be at all ashamed of adult visitors seeing it there!

Giveaway:  To win your own copy of this one, leave a comment (with a way to get a hold of you if you don't have contact info. on your own blog) by next Wednesday, Nov. 14, at 11:59pm.  (US and Canada)

And the winner is...ILuvReadingTooMuch

(disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher)

13 Hangmen, by Art Corriveau, for Timeslip Tuesday

I'd thought that eventually I'd run out of time travel books for kids to fill my Timeslip Tuesday slots, but, happily, more keep coming!  13 Hangmen, by Art Corriveau (Amulet Books, April, 2012) is one of this year's crop.

The story begins when Tony DiMarco's great uncle dies, and leaves him number 13, Hangmen Court, an old row house in Boston (along with the first baseball cap Ted Williams ever owned).   The house comes with two conditions--not only must Tony and his family live there, but that Tony must sleep in the attic room.   Though the family are thrilled at first to have a home of their own, the house turns out to be in an awful state of repair.  Tony's annoying older twin brothers get two of the more decent rooms, but Tony's stuck up in the dump of the attic.

But in the attic is a stone with a spiral carved into it...and that stone marks a portal through time.  One by one, each of the five boys, all just turned 13, like Tony, who lived in that room before Tony are called together.  Each one shares his own story of how, despite poverty and prejudice, they were able to pass the house on to the next boy in the chain, keeping it from falling into the hands of the mysteriously rapacious Hagmann family next door.   These boys-- the children of Italian, Jewish, and Irish immigrants, a boy who escaped slavery and is being sheltered in this house by the Underground railroad, and finally, last in the chain, Paul Revere's apprentice-- all tell their other stories up in Tony's attic room.

And in the meantime, Tony is frantically trying to put all the clues in these stories together, to solve the mystery of what is hidden at 13 Hangmen Court, why the Hagmann family are so desperate to get the house, and how he can save the house itself from being condemned.   Even more pressingly, the current Mr. Hagmann has accused Tony's father of murdering Great Uncle Angelo....but it's clear to Tony that Mr. Hagmann himself is much more likely to have done so.

And even more in the meantime, Tony is struggling to lose weight (a small side plot that I found a bit distracting), struggling with his brothers, and working on finding his own place in the world.

The various historical narratives are fascinating, and quite boy friendly.  Though this is certainly an educational book, the pacing is fast enough, and the stories (both the past adventures of the boys, and the murder mystery of the present) are exciting enough, to keep the reader's interest.  I especially enjoyed how the various boys can only see what's in the attic room from times current with, and prior, to their own--this adds a nice dose of humor.

The author includes notes at the end that describes small liberties he took with the historical record, and I have no objection to authors of historical fiction adding details and motives and small events that aren't actually part of recorded history. However,  as a reader who knows something about the Native peoples of New England (because of being an archaeologist in New England), I was distressed by the liberties Corriveau took in appropriating and reshaping Native American culture to provide the mechanism for the time travel--to wit, using spiral petroglyphs, called "pawcorances", apparently (in this fictional world) quite commonly found in the Boston area, as portals to the past

Corriveau credits Myles Standish (as explained in the notes at the end of the book) with Captain John Smith's description of the concept of the "pawcorance"--which Smith translates as alter stones--transporting this mid-Atlantic word to New England.  To these stones Corriveau added on his own carvings of spiral petroglphys, and says that they marked "where the tribe's thirteen-year-old-braves held their vision quests" (page 87).   Although there are certainly many extensive and varied sacred stone landscapes in New England, some of which include petroglyphs,  I have never seen any spirals up here (New York state, and further south, there are spirals).  And please, can we just all agree to stop using the word "braves" like this?

On a smaller scale of irksomeness, the word "pawcornce" might well mean some type of small bird, but Corriveau's decision to translate it as "mocking-bird" was troublesome.  Mocking-birds have been extending their range north in the past decades, and were very uncommon hereabouts in the past, and they didn't play any documented role in any of the stories I know of from this region.

Corriveau then falls into a distressing anthropological stereotype, that of the Timeless Native -- "Nor did [the Native peoples of the region] have any concept of past or future.  For them, everything happened--birth, manhood, marriage, death--in one long, never ending now." (page 89)  Although there may well be no word for "time" in the various Algonquin languages,  it doesn't mean that there was no concept of past or future. 

I've detailed my unhappiness with this aspect of the book because it carried through the whole thing, and colored my reading experience--I wasn't able to trust the accounts of the later centuries I was given.  If it hadn't been for that, I'd recommend it highly as a fun and fascinating, historically rich, mystery, with specific appeal to boys who are Red Sox fans.

Other blog reviews at Hippies, Beauty, and Books...Oh My!, Semicolon,  In Bed With Books, and books4yourkids.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

You might think from the title of The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, by Catherynne M. Valente (Feiwel & Friends, October 2012, ages 10 and up), that young September's second visit to Fairyland is all fun and parties.  It's not.  Yes, there are revels...but this journey is a rather serious quest through Fairyland Below--one with Consequences.

In September's first adventure (The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making), she parted with her shadow.   And her shadow went down below, and became ruler of a land of wild revels, drawing ever more shadows down to her kingdom, and, in so doing, fatally weakening the magic of the land above.   So September decides to set things right (feeling somewhat responsible) and sets of to wake the missing prince of Fairyland below, and somehow bring the shadows back up above, to restore the missing magic.  In her travels, September meets the shadows of old friends, encounters many strange and magical beings (including lovey new friends, like the Night Dodo), and is sorely tested...but, being stubborn and determined, she never gives up. 

Like the first book, this is a somewhat episodic story, but here, because September (and the reader) know what's at stake pretty early on, it's a more clearly focused journey (which I appreciated).   The rich panoply of images and descriptions, and the unforgettable persons and places, full of marvellous detail, still comprise the bulk of the story telling, but the more serious focus, and September's greater self-awareness, make this one richer and deeper.

I enjoyed it very much (despite the fact that the Intrusive Narrator claimed to be my friend at one point, which I thought was presumptuous).

Note on age:  although this is one that is just fine for all ages, 13 year old September is very much the upper-middle-school-aged archetype--she does get her first kiss, but the YA themes of romance and separation aren't here.  Instead, it's a book about finding oneself in the context of friends and family (while having fantastical adventures).

Disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

The Nov. 3 Round-up of what I found in my blog reading of interest to fans of middle grade sci fi/fantasy

 Happy Daylight Savings Time, fellow USians! May today's extra hour bring you joy (or whatever).   Here's are the middle grade sci fi/fantasy book related posts I found this week (middle grade being roughly 9-12 years old); please let me know if I missed your post!

The Reviews

13 Hangmen, by Art Corroveau, at Semicolon

The Bad Apple, by T.R. Burns, at Secrets & Sharing Soda

Benjamin Franklinstein Meets Thomas Deadison, by Matthew McElligott and Larry Tuxbury, at Semicolon

Beauty and the Beast: the Only One Who Didn't Run Away, by Wendy Mass, at Charlotte's Library

Dead City, by James Ponti, at Book Sake

The Emerald Atlas, by John Stephens, at Madigan Reads 

Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities, by Mike Jung, at Book Nut

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente, at Pass the Chiclets

Goblin Secrets, by William Alexander, at Book Nut
and Fuse #8

Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms, by Lissa Evans, at Challenging the Bookworm

In a Glass Grimmly, by Adam Gidwitz, at Book Nut

The Jewel of the Kalderash, by Marie Rutkoski, at alibrarymama

Keeper of the Lost Cities, by Shannon Messenger, at Michelle Mason

The Last Dragonslayer, by Jasper Fforde, at Sonderbooks 

The Legend of Ghost Dog, by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel, at Ms. Yingling Reads

The Mapmaker and the Ghost, by Sarvenas Tash, at Semicolon 

The Mark of Athena, by Rick Riordan, at Lit Princess, Zezee's Link, Consuming Books Bloggery!,  mylittlechateau,  Girl With a Straight Face, (and lots more....)

The Mythical 9th Division: Operation Robot Storm, by Alex Milway, at Jean Little Library 

Neversink, by Barry Wolverton, at Semicolon

Once Upon a Toad, by Heather Vogel Frederick, at Sonderbooks

The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate, at Semicolon

The Peculiar, by Stefan Bachmann, at vikki vansickle

The River of No Return (Jaguar Stones Book 3), by J & P Voelkel, at Charlotte's Library

The Savage Fortress, by Sarwat Chadda, at The Enchanted Inkpot

The Secret Prophecy, by Herbie Brennan, at Julie DeGuia  (giveaway)

Seven-Day Magic, by Edward Eager, at Tor

Splendors and Glooms, by Laura Amy Schlitz, at Ex Libris

The Spy Princess, by Sherwood Smith, at Random Musings of a Bibliophile and Semicolon

Storybound, by Marissa Burt, at Geo Librarian

The Unwanteds, by Lisa McMann, at That's Another Story

A Warlock in Whitby, by Robin Jarvis, at Fantastic Reads

What Came From the Stars, by Gary Schmidt, at Semicolon 

The Wishing Spell, by Chris Colfer, at Lit Princess

The Wide-Awake Princess, by E.D. Baker, at Geo Librarian

Ana at The Book Smugglers looks at three classic mg horror stories


Authors

Catherynne M. Valente talking fairytales at BookYurt

Adam Gidwitz on fairytales (dark and grimm) at BookYurt

And continuing the theme, Marie Brennan talks about what makes a folk tale at Book View Cafe

Lana Krumwiede (Freakling) at Cynsations

Marissa Moss (Mira's Diary: Lost in Paris) at The Elliott Review (giveaway)

More Good Stuff

Ursula Le Guin is always Good Stuff-here's a review of her two just published short story anthologies at Slate -- lots of interesting thoughts on genre

Kid-Lit Cares--an auction to help those affected by Sandy (of particular interest to aspiring writers)

Tony DiTerlizzi's Top 10 Books for creeping out kids at Wire
and at Project Mayhem, scary stories for the non-horror reading kid.

At Scribble City Central, it's "S is for Slaugh" with Lucy Coats.

Something to keep in mind as we eat left-over Halloween candy--chocolate makes snails smarter 

 But the best thing of all that I saw this week has to be the WW II message capsule found on the leg of a long-deceased homing pigeon (here's my take on it)

Beauty and the Beast: The Only One Who Didn't Run Away

Way back in 2005, Wendy Mass published the first in her Twice Upon a Time series--Rapunzel: the One With All the Hair. The second book, Sleeping Beauty: the One Who Took a Really Long Nap, followed in 2006. And then Mass left fairy tales for the next few years (though she didn't leave off magic). This year Mass returned to Twice Upon a Time, with Beauty and the Beast: the Only One Who Didn't Run Away (Scholastic, middle-grade, June 2012).

And, um, it didn't work for me.  Not in a horribly negative way--I have no hostile feelings at all toward it.   I didn't mind reading it, and was diverted--all the things I like about the story as it exists in my mind (the bookish little sister who cares about important things, the Beast with a backstory--likable, even lovable, under the fur, the castle with books) are there.  A younger reader might well enjoy it lots, what with its likable heroine, and its mix of humor and a serious, life-or-death, story.

But it felt a bit off to me.  For one thing, Beauty doesn't arrive at the castle until page 212 of 282 pages, so Beauty and the Beast getting to know each other is a lot less important than it often is, and since that is my favorite part of the story, it was a disappointment.   And what comes before The Meeting doesn't make up for it.  Before we get there, we have lots of kind of inconsequential stuff, along with two main sub stories (told in the alternative perspectives of Beauty and the Beast), to wit:

1.  A quest adventure that Beauty has on her own, the point of which doesn't become at all clear until quite close to the end of the book (and even when it's clear it doesn't seem like much point).  It was a really implausible sort of quest too, involving a girl who is kind of fairy-like wanting to find something her mother lost years ago, and it doesn't have much umph to it and it beats me why anyone thought that Beauty, just cause she didn't have much else better to do and was reasonably bright and spunky, and had travelled a little, would be the perfect travelling companion for this mysterious little girl.  But the baker's apprentice is going too, and pleasant, intelligent young bakers with no skills beyond baking are awfully useful on quests (?). 

2.  The story of how the Beast came to be a Beast, and how his invisible parents and older brother and him in Beast form all live together in the castle hoping for a girl to come marry him.  This part made more sense, although the logistical details of the invisible family (they were keeping their presence secret) bothered me, and the older brother was incredibly annoying and the parents not much better.

So those two stories get the reader to page 212, when the Meeting happens, and then Beauty, being really special, manages to fall in love with the Beast at an unrealistic speed (though they share a keen interest in alchemy, which is nice for them).  This disappointed me, because I like people to fall in love with slow, inexorable subtly.  And then the bad witch who cursed the beast gets what she deserves.

In both these substories, the tone felt unbalanced to me--there was considerable humor, of an almost teetering on farce type, but then the reader was asked to take the story seriously regardless.   Perhaps if the Beast hadn't been named Riley I would have liked it more, but Riley seems to me so 21st-century a name that from the moment I read it (page 6) I was distrustful, and it underscored the disjuncture I felt between the book's "relatable fun" and its moments of "serious historical fantasy." (The cover makes me similarly uneasy--that dress looks much more modern than I think it should, suggesting a contemporary romance).

In short, this re-telling didn't hang together in a cohesive way, but felt like piece-work, kind of randomly joined at the seams. Of course, for this fairy tale, Beauty, by Robin McKinley, set so very high a re-telling bar that nothing else really comes close for me....

"Christmas won't be Christmas without any [dead pigeon bones]"

Bonus points if you recognize the quotation (Amy in Little Women). Even more bonus points if you realized I was talking about the very deceased homing pigeon from World War II that was just found in an English chimney, message capsule still intact.

From The Huffington Post:  "Martin said he and his wife Anne "were stunned it was like Christmas had come early. The chimney was full of hundreds of twigs and rubbish and then I just started finding various bits of a dead pigeon."

Obviously I have been doing the gift giving thing all wrong.

The other thing that struck me about the story (apart from the sad poignancy of homing instincts gone terribly wrong) is that it's taking so long to decode the message.  Surely somewhere the British Government still has "A Handy Guide to WW II Codes" or some such.   However, it seems like it might have been a tough nut to crack even then:

"Whatever it was, it must have been "highly top secret," said Colin Hill, curator of Bletchley Park’s ‘Pigeons at War’ exhibit and a volunteer for the Royal Pigeon Racing Association. He told the Mail that of more than 30 messages from WWII carrier pigeons in the collection, not a single one is written in code."

What will it say??!!!

The Publishers Weekly list of Best Books--with four mg sff books making it on

 Best Books of the Year season is here, with Publishers Weekly presenting their list.   I of course zoomed in on the children's books, and here are the middle grade fantasy books that made it on.  (The links take you to what PW says about them in the Best Books list)

 The Peculiar, by Stefan Bachmann    Yep, I agree wholeheartedly.  This is one that impressed the heck out of me too!

In a Glass Grimmly, by Adam Gidwitz   I can get behind this one too.  For reasons that I'm not at all clear about, A Tale Dark and Grimm left me cold, but I enjoyed this one lots.

Starry River of the Sky, by Grace Lin     I enjoyed it, it's a beautiful book, and I'm happy to recommend it enthusiastically.

Yay!  The next mg sff book on the list is The False Prince, by Jennifer Nielsen.  Yay!  One of my personal favorites of the year.

I was also pleased to see Bitterblue, a book I'm very fond of.  But you know, I really don't think Wonder was all that great.  It seems to me that the message has more appeal than the writing...

Why I vote

Back in 2008, a group of bloggers organized a day on which they gathered together posts about why voting matters.   They're doing it again this year, and again I'm taking part.  (Here's the round-up post, at Chasing Ray).

So here's why I'm voting.

I'm voting because there is more at stake than just who becomes president--the local elections are going to have an immediate impact on my life in my small New England town, and I have been busily trying to find out which local candidates share my concerns--it's hard, because (strangely (not)) no one candidate completely agrees with me (as I have explained to my boys, I myself would be utterly unelectable). 

But I'm going to be studying the candidates carefully, because the choices that the people who win in these local elections make are going to affect my life almost immediately (what, for instance, will happen to the large piece of land, teetering on the edge of vast commercial development, up at the end of my street?  Will having legalized gambling help my state's economy, or should I vote against it because of the fact that our federally recognized Indian tribe cannot legally have a casino? Will voters approve bond issues giving us better colleges and more open space?  Will my  friends get to marry each other?).  

In short, voting matters, at a purely pragmatic, practical, local level, to everyone.  Almost immediately.

But in my heart I vote because I'd feel ashamed if I didn't.  Here's what I wrote back in 2008 (now slightly edited), that explains why:

On Tuesday morning, my boys and I are going to go vote (my husband would be voting too, if he were a citizen). It's a short drive to the elementary school just up the road, but it's long enough for me to tell them stories.

This year I'll be reminding them of the Arab Spring--with all its hope and horror and repercussions that are still being played out.

I'll tell them about the monks of Burma taking to the streets in peaceful protest five years, and how we might never know how many disappeared or died. About Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, locked in her house for years. About the military dictatorship that killed and imprisoned anyone who tries to make their voice heard (my eyes get a little teary).   (note to self:  see what's up in Myanmar these days: World Bank approves first aid in 25 years--good; ethnic violence imperils reform--bad).

Then I'll tell them how I watched, back in 1989, a young man in China block the path of a tank, simply by standing still. I'll tell them of people who risk everything for the rights we take for granted.


At this point we'll be pulling into the school parking lot. Sniffing hard, I'll tell my boys that it is to honor these people around the world, who would die to have our rights, that I vote every chance I get. That if I let my voice be silenced, out of laziness or inertia, I would be failing them.

And I'll tell my boys that maybe my one little vote, here in our small state, won't make or break the national election. But if we throw away the chance to vote, as if it were of no importance, we dismiss the struggles of people past and present to get that chance.

We'll walk past the people holding signs for their various candidates (who aren't afraid of being dragged away by evil government agents), we'll walk to the nice folks handing out ballots (our friends and neighbors, who are doing their best to run a good and careful election), and I'll have to sniff again before being able to say my name.

"Voting always makes me cry," I'll explain, with my best attempt at an insouciant shrug. Because, darn it, it does.

And my children, being older and more adolescent than they were four years ago, will probably be hideously embarrassed.  Tough.  

The River of No Return (The Jaguar Stones, Book 3)

For those who are not familiar with The Jaguar Stones series, by J & P Voelkel, its the story of what happens when the Mayan Death Lords seek to get their greedy little supernatural hands of death on the five Jaguar Stones that will let them unleash an apocalypse of doom on humanity. Two kids, Max from Boston, the child of archaeologists who are experts on Mayan culture, and Lola, who is Mayan, are basically all that's standing in their way, desperately keeping the fifth of the Jaguar Stones safe.

In The River of No Return, the third book of the series, Max and Lola return to the jungle...and find the Death Lords eager as all get out to get their little undead hands on the fifth stone.   In a series of harrowing, yet humorous, adventures (mainly set in a hotel of Mayan Death Doom), Max and Lola find themselves cast as the divine twin heroes who long ago defeated the Death Lords.  However, in as much as Max and Lola are not divine hero twins, things get a bit tricky....rather gruesomely!

Oh gosh.  How to "review" this without resorting to adjectival cliches? (such as:  action packed, thrilling, gripping, rip-roaring,  laugh-out-loud,  kid/boy-friendly).   Fortunately for my own reading taste, all these cliches come in a story that has narrative coherence  and interesting characters, and although it perhaps tilts slightly too much toward the farcical for my taste (tapir pee for the win!), I still enjoyed it lots.   Not, you know, enjoyed it in a "this is a life-changing book of transcendent beauty" way, but more "that was a fun read."

And it's always a nice change to read a (cliche being used alert) rip-roaring, action packed fantasy that draws on a non-European tradition.  Quick--how many other Mayan inspired fantasy adventure stories for kids (written in English) can you think of?  Answer:  arguably Summer of the Mariposas.  Arguably Sea of the Dead.  Then silence from me (if you can think of others, let me know!). 

Additional bonus points:

1.   I like the pro-environment message. I think cutting down the rainforest is sub-optimal. 
2.  I like the educational glossary.  Learning is good.
3.  Though the story is told from Max's point of view, Lola is a worthy heroine of the Strong Girl type.  That being said, Max is less annoying in this book, which is good, but Lola is still the brains of the team (this isn't all that hard, though Max is making progress).
4.  A nice jaguar, for readers looking for nice jaguars.
5.  (Possibly a bonus) disgusting food and gore, for readers looking for disgusting food (both man-made--pizza gelato, and supernatural--Death Lord cuisine) and gore (of a festering kind, rather than characters getting gorily disemboweled or what have you).

Here are my reviews of book 1:  Middleworld (which I called (sigh) "a fun, fast read") and book 2: The End of the World Club ("exciting reading"). 

disclaimer:  review copy of this thrilling page-turner received from the publisher at BEA