5/16/14

The Fairy Doll & Other Tales from the Doll's House, by Rumer Godden

Oh goodness, if you (or a young reader you know) are at all a fan of dolls, and dollhouses, and making tiny stuff, and like excellent stories that incorporate such things, RUN to get yourself (and the young reader) a copy of The Fairy Doll & Other Tales from the Doll's House, by Rumer Godden (out in paperback this month from Macmillan Children's Books).  This is an anthology of all of Godden's doll stories, and it contains the following stories (with original dates of publication)

The Doll's House (1947)
Miss Happiness and Miss Flower (1961)
Little Plum (1963)
The Fairy Doll (1956)
The Story of Holly & Ivy (1958)
Candy Floss (1957)
Impunity Jane (1955)

So basically what you get is 468 pages of the most beautiful doll goodness you can imagine.  And along with the dolls, you also get the stories of the children whose dolls they are.

Now, I myself had read The Doll's House back in the day, and it distressed me somewhat--one of the dolls is an evil, conniving piece of work and as a result I didn't seek out Godden's other doll books.  This was my loss, because I would have loved them, but on the other hand it meant that I had a lovely, blissful, utterly satisfying time reading all the rest of them pretty much straight through over the past two days!

I especially recommend Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, which I can safely say is the best doll house book I have ever read.  It is the story of a little girl, Nona, who's sent from India to live with London cousins, and who is absolutely miserable.   Then two little Japanese dolls arrive from an American great-aunt, and Nona, seeing in them a mirror of her own cultural dislocation, begins to plan how she can make them feel at home.  The whole family ends up being drawn in to making a Japanese dollhouse, complete with many, many beautiful accessories....and even Belinda, the youngest cousin who took a Skinner to both Nona and the dolls, ends up being won over.  It is very moving, and if you have a child who loves making small, detailed things, this is pretty much a perfect story.

And if you are at all like me, this book will make you want to start building a Japanese doll house of you own (with sliding partitions, and bonsai trees) and it was such a treat to find the story of Belinda, Nona, and the dolls continuing in Little Plum!

The Story of Holly & Ivy made me weep a bit on the bus ride home--it's a lovely Christmas story of a doll and an orphan girl finding each other, and a forever home.   And if you can find a doll with a red dress, like Holly's, I can't think of a better book and doll paring for Christmas than this one.

And I want to mention Impunity Jane in particular as well, for how often do you find the story of how a boy adopts an unwanted doll, and plays with her....while worrying about being found out by the other boys?  It ends happily, because Impunity Jane is such a lovely action figure that she fits just beautifully into games that don't involve traditionally "girlish" pursuits.  Read this one to the young boys in your life, so that they are encouraged to think outside gendered boxes, and so that, if they already have played with dolls and it has worried them, they can be comforted.  (And in Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, the boy cousin is the main builder of the doll house, allowing him to be part of the imaginative fun too!).

Of course, the cover, what with its pinkness and gold trim, is designed to appeal to girls; it would be hard to get your average boy to sit down and read them independently.  Sneaky reading out loud would have to be the way to go.....

In any event, I'm so glad I got a review copy of this one; I loved reading these lovely stories.   Except I didn't read The Doll's House again, because the evil doll was seared into my mind just plenty.

Interesting aside:  here is a description of sushi as enjoyed (!) by  a London family of the early 1960s, from Little Plum:

"She made sushi, which are slices of pressed rice with all kinds of surprises in the middle--meat, shrimps, or a slice of crystallized orange, or a dab of custard with seaweed on top."

Custard sushi....can this really have happened????  There is egg custard sushi, but what with the "dab" I don't think that's what this was....

5/15/14

Goodbye, Mary Stewart

Mary Stewart, author of my favorite romantic suspense novels, died on May 10th.  Here is her obituary, at The Guardian.   My mother gave me my first Mary Stewart romance, The Moon Spinners, when I was twelve, and I couldn't decide which I loved most about it--the beautiful descriptions of place, or the romantic frissons.   This combination, sometimes more successfully than others, makes her an author I still treasure (mostly in memory, because I read her books so often that my mind can just scroll through them at will).    I wonder if my mother ever noticed that I took all her Mary Stewart books away with me....she had them practically memorized too, so perhaps not.

I'm so glad her books got reissued recently, and she found new fans!

And I loved her children's book, The Little Broomstick, and her vision of the Dark Ages, put forward in her Merlin series that beings with The Crystal Cave, had a huge impact on me.

Here's the one thing I hold against Mary Stewart--she made me feel inadequate about my inability to wear crisp linen dresses while traveling (see Madam,Will You Talk).   (No matter how crisp a garment is when I put it on, almost immediately the rot sets in....)

5/14/14

The Hero's Guide to Being an Outlaw, by Christopher Healy (a response as opposed to a measured, critical review)

There are retold fairy tales, there are fractured fairy tales, and then there are stories that might once have said hi to fairy tales in passing but then went on to have rich, vivid, lives of their own.   The Hero's Guide series, by Christopher Healy, is of the later sort--sure, the characters might have started in fairy tales, but they soon transcended the destinies written for them in the original stories. 

You don't want to read The Hero's Guide to Being an Outlaw (Walden Pond Press,April 29, 2014) until you've read the first to books (guides to Saving the Kingdom and Storming the Castle).  And you don't want to read much about the plot of this one here and now, because it's really best just to read the book. So I shall just describe it in general terms:

Silly.  Fun. Tremendously entertaining.   Pirates, but not so much as to make those who don't like pirates feel burdened.  Likable characters who you want to shake from time to time.  And interesting adventure that asks the reader not so much to suspend disbelief, but to leave it at exit 8 of New Jersey Turnpike (that's where we stop and spend the night on the way to Grandma's at Christmas, which is irrelevant).

Oh, I was doubtful, back when I started the first Hero's Guide.  What manner of farce is this, I asked myself.   My doubts faded in the bright light (or something) of Christopher Healy's rollicking (nod to pirates, who I think of as rollicking) prose, and reading the third book was just plain old relaxing fun, interspersed by bits of me rolling my eyes at some of the characters (in a friendly sort of way).

Though the "hero" bit implies a masculine focus, it's the female characters who actually have the sense, the skills, and the smarts to get things done.  So don't be afraid to give this to handy girls as well as the perhaps more obvious handy boys.

disclaimer:  review copy received from the publisher

5/13/14

Kissing Shakespeare, by Pamela Mingle

If you enjoy romantic time travel, written for the YA reader, you may well enjoy Kissing Shakespeare, by Pamela Mingle (Delacorte, 2012) .   If, perhaps, you ask for a tad more than time travel back into a love triangle of sorts, such as political/religious tangles of plot, you will get that tad more.  But if you ask for a lot more...not so much.  

Miranda is a young actress, very much conflicted about the whole acting thing because she is the daughter of famous Shakespearian actors.  Stephan is a young Elizabethan gentleman, with the ability to travel through time,  who has arrived in the present, started watching tv to gain an appreciation of cultural norms, and  insinuated himself into the play that Mrianda's currently starring in (The Taming of the Shrew).   Stephan is pretty sure (based on the shows he's watched) that modern teens throw themselves into bed with each other with delighted abandon, and he's reasonably sure that Miranda won't mind travelling back into the past with him so that she can seduce Shakespeare. She does, rather a lot, especially because (with excellent reason) she is furious that Stephan considers her a wanton wench.

(Teenaged Shakespeare is in danger of become a Jesuit, which is convincingly possible as things are presented here.  Being seduced, Stephan assumes, will make him less likely to leave the world and it's pleasures behind....and the world won't lose his plays, which would, Stephan's visions inform him, be catastrophic).

So there's Miranda, back in the past acting the role of Stephan's sister, and rather conflicted about losing her virginity to Shakespeare (assuming the seduction works).  

And there are a bunch of secondary characters, very much concerned with religion (because many of them are staunch Catholics, which was not as safe as may be under Elizabeth I).

And there is Stephan, to whom Miranda is drawn with passionate intensity....and who is not, in his turn, undrawn to her....

And there's young Shakespeare...working on the first draft of Taming of the Shrew while contemplating religion....

And there are the hunters of Catholics, ready to burn them at the stake etc., closing in on the manor house where all this is happening....

And there are Stephan and Miranda, kissing...and Shakespeare and Miranda, kissing....and Miranda wanting Stephan to kiss her more... (while still Stephan wants Miranda to jump into bed with Shakespeare, which was icky).

Like I said, you have to enjoy romantic time travel to really like this one, and it wasn't quite enough for me, especially since the romance was tinged with ick.   On top of that, my reading experience was rather spoiled by a historical error--  in 1581 you can't pass off a befuddled girl as a servant recently come from the New World.    And so, perforce, I distrusted the historical accuracy of the book from that point on, and though, apart from a reference to leprosy being a thing of the past in England (which, Wikipedia informs me,  it wasn't until two centuries later) I didn't find any thing else that seemed wrong, I never shook off my suspicions.  I was not soothed by Miranda either--although apparently she did a just marvelous job passing herself off as an Elizabethan, I wasn't convinced.

I was glad when the religious element of the plot (Catholics vs Protestants) pushed itself to the forefront of the story about halfway through -- it made a rather slow-moving story more interesting.  And there was the added thought-provoking thread of the role of women in Elizabethan England.  On the down side,  Shakespeare himself barely added any interest--I can't remember him saying anything at all Shakespearean, which was a disappointment.

In any event, read this if you want a bit of historically tangled romance, but not if you want a really satisfying time travel story.

However, you don't have to take my word for it:

School Library Journal, August 2012:
"This novel is definitely a cut above the typical teen romance. A delightful story about star-crossed, time-traveling lovers."

Booklist, September 15, 2012:
"Mingle remains true to the history and events of the era, thus revealing the challenge of living in a time of religious persecution and suppression of women."


5/12/14

Mouseheart, by Lisa Fiedler (with giveaway of great summer reads-- Mouseheart, The Search for WondLa, and Belly Up!)


Mouseheart, by Lisa Fiedler, generously illustrated by Vivienne To (Simon and Schuster, middle grade, in stores May 20, 2014) is the fast-paced story of a mouse of destiny set in the subterranean depths of New York city. I'm happy to be able to offer a giveaway along with my own thoughts--scroll down for details.

When I am about to read a book in which a mouse is the hero, I ask myself my "mouse questions" (which I am actually formulating right now for the first time--they have previously been an amorphous swirl, because that's how I think). If the hero of a book were to be a fish, "fish" could be substituted for "mouse," etc.

1. If all the mice and other animal characters were people, would the plot be appreciably different?  Would my emotional response be any different? 

2. And following from that, is there any "mousiness" to the main character?   If I were never told he or she was a mouse, would I suspect that there was something not-human going on?  Does the fact that the rodents wear clothes and fight with swords distract me?

Maybe these questions wouldn't actually work for fish, because, you know, water.  But the basic point of them is that if I am to read a book in which a mouse is a hero, I want there to be some point to the mousiness.  And so, as I read Mouseheart, I pondered these questions.

Here is the gist of the story:

Down below New York city is Atlantia, small, gated utopia of rats.   It is guarded by cats, whose queen has signed a treaty with the emperor of the rats.  Up above is a pet store, from which three young mouse siblings escape.  One of these, Hopper, our hero, falls into the New York subway system, where he is taken under the paw of a young, swashbuckling rat who turns out to be the utopia's prince.

Hopper wants to find both his siblings and a safe home, but he finds himself drawn deep into the world of those who want to bring down Atalantia.   He does not want to be drawn into revolution and rebellion--he wants to believe in the utopia.    Nor is Hopper enthusiastic when the rebel mice hail him as a chosen mouse of destiny, savior of the rebellion (that bit about him believing in the utopia makes being a hero of the  rebel cause tricky).  But destiny can be hard to avoid...especially once you realize that the utopia comes with a terrible, terrible price (that whole bit about the treaty between the cats and the rats?  It has a Dark Underside of a not unexpected, biologically-sound, sort).

So the fact that the main characters are rodents is absolutely essential for the plot to work, and to have powerful emotional heft when the Dark Underside is revealed.   And allowing the rodents and cats to be rather advanced, viz trappings of civilizations, lifted the above animal adventure into the territory of fantasy epic, that I thinks adds to its kid appeal.   Perhaps more could have been made of the physical qualities that distinguish rodents from people (like keen sense of smell, and the use of whiskers), but I felt I was at least getting a mouse-perspective on the New York subway system, which made up for that.   Though there was a sense that the characters were simply small people, it was not so much an issue that it broke my suspension of disbelief.

Mouseheart is one I'd recommend to readers seeking an animal-based entrée into the world of false utopias--it has engaging main characters, dark undercurrents, and a vivid setting.  That being said, I do have a rather strong reservation about making a blanket recommendation.   In the very first scene, the actions of a mouse and a rat end up causing a hostile cat's eye to be graphically impaled on a spike.  I think many readers, especially those who love cats, will put the book down right there.  I myself was worried that there would be more graphic violence, but this was the worst, and was much more horrible than the confrontations to come (also involving the dark side to rodent/cat relationships, but less specifically so).

I have another minor reservation, that's more something that didn't work for me personally--Hopper's sister ends up messing up their escape from the pet shop because she can't control the desire to bite its owner.  But she blames Hopper, and he just takes it.   This made her totally unsympathetic, and Hopper seem a bit wet.

In any event, Mouseheart has gotten excellent reviews from Publishers Weekly--  "For those who love an underdog and some romping good battles, Fiedler thoroughly entertains" and from Kirkus--"Riddled with surprises, the fast-paced, complex plot features a host of vivid, memorable rodent and feline characters.... Another stalwart mouse with a brave heart will win fans in this captivating underground adventure."  I agree that many young readers will enjoy this lots (just so long as they aren't too terribly fond of cats.....).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Fiedler is the author of several novels for children and young adults. She divides her time between Connecticut and the Rhode Island seashore, where she lives happily with her very patient husband, her brilliant and beloved daughter, and their two incredibly spoiled golden retrievers.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Vivienne To has illustrated several books, including The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins and the Randi Rhodes, Ninja Detective series by Octavia Spencer. As a child, she had two pet mice escape. She currently lives in Sydney, Australia, with her partner and her ginger cat. Visit her at VivienneTo.com.

Courtesy of the publisher, I'm happy to offer this great giveaway of Mouseheart plus The Search for WondLa and Belly Up!  Just leave a comment (perhaps sharing your own favorite mouse fantasy) between now and 8:30 am Monday morning and you'll be entered!









5/11/14

This week's round-up of middle grade science fiction and fantasy from around the blogs (5/11/14)

Welcome to this week's round-up, and Happy Mother's Day to all those who celebrate it.   I am celebrating it by cleaning up after my children, in particular cleaning up after my 11 year old's birthday party, which is the reason I'm late getting this post up.

But I would like to take this opportunity to thank my own mother (not that she reads my blog) for reading me The Silmarilian.   Lots of parents read The Hobbit to their kids, many read The Lord of the Rings, but only really special mothers (with special children) read every word of The Silmarilian (which is something I haven't done, but in fairness, it was easier/more interesting for my mother to do it because it was her first time reading it too).

In any event.

The Reviews:

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett, at Fantasy Literature

Ancient Fire, by Mark London Williams, at Charlotte's Library

The Bravest Princess, by E.D. Baker, at Ms. Yingling Reads

The Castle Behind Thorns, by Merrie Haskell, at Log Cabin Library

The Door, by Andy Marino, at On Starships and Dragon Wings

Dragon Slippers, by Jessica Day George, at On Starships and Dragon Wings

The Dyerville Tales, by M.P. Kozlowsky, at Page In Training
and The Book Monsters

The Forbidden Library, by Django Wexler, at Bestfantasybooks

The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing, by Sheila Turnage, at Semicolon

Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods, by Suzanne Collins, at Fyrefly's Book Blog

The Hero's Guide to Being an Outlaw, by Christopher Healey, at The Book Monsters and Sharon the Librarian

The Invisible Order, by Paul Crilley, at The Book Brownie

The Islands of Chaldea, by Diana Wynne Jones and Ursula Jones, at Librarian of Snark 

The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge, at Tor

The Mark of the Dragonfly, by Jaleigh Johnson, at Nerdy Book Club

The Night Gardener, by Jonathan Auxier, at Waking Brain Cells, The Book Monsters, and Karissa's Reading Review

Nightingale's Nest, by Nikki Loftin, at Geo Librarian

The Peculiar, by Stefan Bachmann, at Librarian of Snark

The Riverman, by Aaron Starmer, at Kid Lit Geek

The Shadow Throne, by Jennifer Nielsen, at Reads For Keeps

Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run, by Michael Hemphill and Sam Riddleburger, at Madigan Reads

The Thickety, by J.A. White, at The Social Potato

Three Pickled Herrings (Wings and Co.), by Sally Gardner, at Wondrous Reads

The Unicorn Thief, by R.R. Russell, at Word Spelunking

Two Rumplestiltskin retelligs at thebookshelfgargoyle



Authors and Interviews

M.P.  Kozlowsky (The Dyerville Tales) at The Book Monsters and The Haunting of Orchid Forsythia (giveaways)

Nikki Loftin (Nightingale's Nest) at The Book Cellar

R.R. Russell (The Unicorn Thief) at Wondrous Reads 

Daniel Nanavati (Midrak Earthshaker) Carpinello's Writing Pages


Other Good Stuff

The finalists for the Locus Awards (chosen by readers of Locus Magazine) have been announced, and here are the Young Adult finalists, which include two that are more Middle Grade:
 
-->
Zombie Baseball Beatdown, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown) 
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black (Little, Brown; Indigo) 
Homeland, Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; Titan) 
The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine) 
The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, Catherynne M. Valente (Feiwel and Friends)
Zombie Baseball Beatdown, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown) The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black (Little, Brown; Indigo) Homeland, Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; Titan) The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine) The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, Catherynne M. Valente (Feiwel and Friends) - See more at: http://www.locusmag.com/News/2014/05/2014-locus-awards-finalists/#sthash.JBwPc1uv.dpuf
YOUNG ADULT BOOK
- See more at: http://www.locusmag.com/News/2014/05/2014-locus-awards-finalists/#sthash.JBwPc1uv.dpuf
YOUNG ADULT BOOK
- See more at: http://www.locusmag.com/News/2014/05/2014-locus-awards-finalists/#sthash.JBwPc1uv.dpuf
YOUNG ADULT BOOK
- See more at: http://www.locusmag.com/News/2014/05/2014-locus-awards-finalists/#sthash.JBwPc1uv.dpuf

Save the date!  June 6-8 is the 9th Annual 48 Hour Book Challenge, organized by MotherReader.  To continue the momentum of #WeNeedDiverseBooks, this year's challenge is "dedicated to reading, sharing and reviewing books that show diversity in all ways."

And speaking of links, here's a lovely roundup of book diversity links at Jen Robinson's Book Page 

Thoughts on boys and fairy tale movies and gendered merchandise at Once Upon a Blog (my response is to advocate keeping children away from merchandising altogether, raising them in a world as far away as possible from the pressures of late stage capitalism... although I did just buy a Lego Movie tie in lego set.....).

The latest issue of Middle Shelf Magazine is out, with lots of good spec. fic. content.



Thanks for stopping by, and please let me know if I missed your post!


5/8/14

Sophie, In Shadow, by Eileen Kernaghan

Sophie, In Shadow, by Eileen Kernaghan (Thistledown Press, YA, March 2014)

Two years ago, sixteen-year-old English girl Sophie survived the sinking of the Titanic, but her parents did not.  Still haunted by that tragedy, she's sent off to India, to stay with distant cousins--Tom, a zoologist working at the Indian Museum, Jean, his novelist wife, and their young daughter, Alex.  Sophie has prepared herself for "India" by reading (both non-fiction and Kipling), but nothing can prepare her for what happens once she arrives.

Tragedy and culture-shock combine to wake in Sophie a gift of sorts--her perceptions of both past and future become strangely sharpened.  And her visions will make her a player in the tail end of Kipling's Great Game--the game of intrigue, political machinations, and spying in which European powers, and now Indian nationalists, shape the future of the country.  World War I is underway in Europe, and plots are afoot in India that may well destroy both Sophie's new family and British control of the sub-continent.

I approach fiction about India, especially fiction involving young English girls with supernatural abilities, with a certain amount of caution, looking carefully for stereotypes, romanticization, and neo-colonial baggage.   Happily, Sophie, In Shadow did a good job of not bothering me!  In large part this is because we stick closely to Sophie's point of view--she is aware that she has a lot of learning to do, and is willing to question the social norms of the very tail end of the British raj.  It is still very much a European point of view, but the reader can't reasonably expect more from this particular character's story.

There was much I enjoyed--I am a huge fan of Kipling's Kim, so it was great to see Sophie becoming involved in the last years of the Great Game, including a bit where a German agent is pursued through the mountains!  And I am also a fan of being educated through historical fiction--before reading this book, I had not particular thoughts on what was happening in India during WW I.  And Sophie herself, and her cousins, are interesting characters with believable motivations, interests, and aspirations.  Added interest came from a secondary character, a friend of Jean's who was a real person--Alexandra David-Néel , a French-Belgian spiritualist, anarchist, Buddhist, writer, and explorer.  I may well have to seek out more about her!

The paranormal elements of the story are enough to add fantastic zest, but are not so much so as to make Sophie a special snowflake saving India (thank goodness!).  Sophie's visions do not take over the book--for the most part, it reads as historical fiction--so don't expect this to be full-blown paranormal fantasy.

In short, Sophie, in Shadow is historical fantasy that both educates and entertains, that I particularly recommend to fans of Kim!

(note:  Jean and Tom and Alexandra were the central characters in Kernaghan's earlier book, Wild Talent, but it is not at all necessary to have read that first).

disclaimer: review copy received from the author

5/7/14

Waiting on Wednesday--Dragons at Crumbling Castle, by Terry Pratchett

My eagle-eyed friend Tanita spotted this in Publishers Weekly yesterday, and sent it my way:  "Anne Hoppe at Clarion Books has bought the U.S. rights to Dragons at Crumbling Castle, a middle-grade collection by Terry Pratchett, illus. by Mark Beech. The 14 stories originally appeared in Buck's Free Press, a newspaper in Buckinghamshire; Pratchett, before becoming a novelist, was a reporter and contributed a number of stories to the paper's Children's Circle section. A publication date has not been finalized..."

Whoot!  Thanks, Tanita!

5/6/14

Ancient Fire, by Mark London Williams for Timeslip Tuesday

Sometimes a reader just has to ask "does the sentient dinosaur boy actually add anything to the story?"   In the case of Ancient Fire (Danger Boy, book 1), by Mark London Williams (2001), I'm happy to say that he does. But before we meet this particular sentient dinosaur from an alternate reality, a lot of other things have to happen.

It is 2019.  Physics has advanced, to the point that two scientists, husband and wife, have made a breakthrough that may allow time travel to be a workable proposition.  A secret government agency is very interested indeed in the ramifications of this...and its agents have invaded the lab where the research is being carried out, and are pushing the experiments to dangerous levels.  So much so that the female scientist disappears, as it were, in a puff of (metaphoric) time smoke.  Her husband, desperate to escape from government control, flees across country with their son, Eli, but the government agents track them, and force the work to continue.  And when Eli incautiously interferes with an experiment, he becomes unlocked in time himself!

In the meantime, a young saurian lad is headed out on a mission to an alternate earth, because this is what all young saurians do in middle school.  The physics of his journey collides with Eli's first rush through time, and they find themselves in ancient Alexandria, just in time to be attacked by an angry mob.   There they meet Thea, daughter of Hypatia, librarian of Alexandria.  After some bouncing in time/near death at the hands of angry mob/manipulation by government agents/the revelation that Eli's mom might be alive in the 1930s/a plague that might have been brought from the past/an angry rhino, the book ends....with lots more story left to be told!

Basically, the sentient dinosaur boy, Clyne, made the book for me.   Without him, it would be generic science-driven time travel for the young; with him, there's lovely cross-cultural exploration, with bonus surrealism.  He's the most engaging character, qua character, as well--perhaps because Eli and Thea are both in such unhappy and anxious states that they don't add much lightness to story (Clyne's major worry, until he's in mortal peril himself,  is the grade he's going get), but mostly because he's such a pleasant, inquisitive, optimistic sentient dinosaur that I liked him lots.

The book also offers a nice introduction to the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria, for those anxious to learn about the past (harrowing, though, to watch the scrolls go up in smoke), and for those who are physics geeks, doubtless the science of nanoparticles and the nature of time and space will provide interesting fodder for critical thought.

I enjoyed this one a lot more than I though I was going to.  It is the first of a series (Danger Boy), and for Clyne's sake I'll actively look for the next book, Dragon Sword--even though the introduction of Arthur and Merlin as allies sends up even more red flags that sentient dinosaurs do! Try this one on the imaginatively adventurous nine or ten year old who enjoys a swirl of complicated plot, sooner rather than later, because 2019 is almost here....and although the book is not that dated yet, physics keeps getting stranger in real life....

(The only other sentient saurian character I can think of is the one in Sherri Tepper's Gibbon's Decline and Fall, which I've whited out the title of because it is a spoiler.  And I didn't mind it there either, so maybe I am more open-minded viz dinosaurs than I think I am.  I still have no desire to read Anne McCaffery's Dinosaur Planet books though).

5/5/14

The Return of Zita the Spacegirl, by Ben Hatke

The Return of Zita the Spacegirl, by Ben Hatke (FirstSecond, May 13, 2014)

The moment I saw Zita the Spacegirl, way back in 2011, I fell in book love.  So did my boys.

Zita is back for her third adventure, and for those of us (me and boys) who are die-hard fans, the third book of her adventures does not disappoint.  We get to see old friends, meet new characters (some cute, some grotesque; some lovable, some despicable), and we get to Zita being her intrepid, warm-hearted, impetuous self. 

Her adventures in this book take her to pretty dark places.  She is a prisoner, sentenced to work in the mines on a prison planet, and it is rather distressing.  If you think your child is not quite ready for rather grim forced labor with shackles, hold off a tad.  I wouldn't, for instance, hurry to give this to a sensitive six or even seven year old.

But, on the other hand, if you are looking for books for eight-year-olds on up that utterly prove that boys will read books with girls, turn to Zita!  My own boys have read our copies many, many times.  Zita is pretty much the most fiercely caring heroine around today I can think of; despite the resolution to the series that comes at the ending of this book, I can't help but hope that we will see more of her.

I love Hatke's drawings, and I very much appreciated the back matter Hatke provides here which includes a lovely sample of character sketches.  He also tells the story of how Zita came to be, which was fun!


Here's a preview at Tor.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

5/4/14

This week's round up of middle grade fantasy and science fiction from around the blogs (5/4/2014)

Yay!  It is sunny and it is May.  And here's what I found in my blog reading this week of interest to us fans of middle grade speculative fiction.  Let me know if I missed yours.

The Reviews:

The Blue Sword, by Robin McKinley, at Views From the Tesseract

The Cryptid Files: The Loch Ness Monster, by Jean Flitcroft, at Finding Wonderland

Dealing With Dragons, by Patricia C. Wrede, at Fantasy Review Barn

Doll Bones, by Holly Black, at Ciara Reads Books

The Dyerville Tales, by M.P. Kozlowsky, at Charlotte's Library

Half Upon a Time, by James Riley, at Tales of the Marvelous

Horizon, by Jenn Reese, at The Book Smugglers

House of Secrets, by Chris Columbus and Ned Vizzini, at Readaraptor

How to Catch a Bogle, by Catherine Jinx, at Good Books and Good Wine (audiobook review)

In the Keep of Time, by Margaret J. Anderson, at Charlotte's Library

The Interupted Tale, by Maryrose Wood, at alibrarymama

The Kindling, by Braden Bell, at Always in the Middle

The Lost Children, by Carolyn Cohagan, at Puss Reboots

Masterpiece, by Elise Broach, at Dead Houseplants

The Monster in the Mudball, by S.P. Gates, at Akossiwa Ketoglo

Operation Bunny, by Sally Garnder, at Booklist Online

Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes, by Jonathan Auxier, at The Reading Hedgehog

Project Xcaliber, by Greg Pace, at Middle Grade Mafioso

Red Riding Hood Gets Lost, by Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams, at Candace's Book Blog

The Ride of Your Life (Creepover #18), by P.J. Night, at Ms. Yingling Reads

The Riverman, by Aaron Starmer, at For Those About to Mock

Rose and the Lost Princess, by Holly Webb, at In Bed With Books

The Sceaming Staircase, by Jonathan Stroud, at Hidden in Pages

Seven Wild Sisters, by Charles de Lint, at The Book Monsters

The Water Castle, by Megan Frazer Blakemore, at Librarian of Snark

When Did You See Her Last?, by Lemony Snicket, at Semicolon and Sonderbooks

A World Without Princess, by Soman Chainani, at A Reader of Fictions (audiobook review)

A passel of books at Ms. Yingling Reads-- The Hero's Guide to Being an Outlaw, The Forbidden Library, The Ninja Librarians and the Accidental Keyhand, and The Islands of Chaldea

Authors and Interviews

Marisa de los Santos and David Teague (Saving Lucas Biggs) at The Write Stuff with giveaway

Dianne Salernie (The Eighth Day) at Literary Rambles, with giveaway

Holly Webb (Rose and the Lost Princess) at Literary Rambles, with giveaway

Anne Ursu gave a great keynote speech at the year's Children's and Young Adult Literature Conference, which you can read here at The Loft .  Here's a teaser:  "This is the age where the world gets a little bigger every day, when your mind is still taking in everything it can, when adults stop shielding the hard things from you. Books are a small place to explore a big world. They are personal—for the first time, they are yours—and they are profound. They reflect and assure, they project and excite. And kids love them for it. They love them with their whole being. "  

Claire Legrand (Year of Shadows) at The Book Cellar

Jaleigh Johnson (Mark of the Dragonfly) at SFFWorld

Jennifer Nielsen (The Ascendance Trilogy) at The Haunting of Orchid Forsythia

The Dyerville Tours, by M.P. Kozlowsky, kicked off its tour this week--the full schedule is here, and  includes guest posts at Word Spelunking and The Book Smugglers

And Jonathan Auxier's After the Book Deal tour continues:
WEEK TWO: Your Book Launch
April 28 - “Can I have Your Autograph?” @ Haunted Orchid
April 29 –  “Cinderella at the Ball” @ The O.W.L.
May 1 – “Being Heard in the Crowd” @ The Misbehavin’ Librarian
May 2 - “The Loneliest Writer in the World” @ Shelf Employed


Other Good Stuff:

Akossiwa Ketoglo is hosting a Marvellous May Middle Grade Readathon

A list of Rick Riordan readalikes at alibrarymama

Lots on diversity this week, most notably the WeNeedDiverseBooks  campaign.

I wish I could offer a nice list of Diverse Middle Grade Speculative Fiction coming out this summer, but I can't--there's Infinity Ring Book 8: Eternity, by Matt de la Peña, and there's Spirit Animals Book 4: Fire and Ice, by Shannon Hale and that's all I can think of.  ARE THERE ANY MORE? Please tell me there are more. 

The Diversity Issue of SLG is up--click through for lots of good stuff, and heres a list of one ten-year-old's recommendations of fantasy and science fiction with diverse characters at Charlotte's Library

I am thinking I might be going to The Maine Comics Arts Festival on May 18th in Portland--when I told the boys that Ben Hatke and Kazu Kibuishi will be there they expressed fanchild interest, which I think should be encouraged.  Not that I myself have any interest in fangirling Ben Hatke (sarcasm font).

And speaking of comics, since yesterday was Free Comics Day, I offer (humbly) another episode in my own *exciting* series about the adventures of two Castaway Blobs, hastily drawn in the last five minutes because planning ahead is hard.





5/3/14

Eddie Red Undercover: Mystery on Museum Mile, by Marcia Wells -- bought, read, and reviewed for #WeNeedDiverseBooks

Today is the third day of the WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign, and it is the Day of Action, which is to say, the day of buying books, and asking our libraries to buy books, and even just checking out lots of diverse books from our libraries, to show they are wanted.   So I set off to my local bookstore to find a middle grade book with diversity in it that I didn't already have, preferably one that showed a kid of color on the cover which wasn't about the Civil War (because I've never really wanted to read about the Civil War). 

Upon arriving at Barnes and Nobel, I was not overwhelmed by the choices available to me, because one book is not a choice.  But at least there was one for me to buy!  And happily, Eddie Red Undercover: Mystery on Museum Mile, by Marcia Wells, illustrated by Marcos Calo (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), was a great book!  One that I have no regrets about whatsoever!  One that I wouldn't have picked up if it hadn't been for the campaign! (one that is making me use too many exclamation marks).

In any event. 

Edmund is an African American kid in New York city with a photographic memory.   When his talents come to the attention of the NYPD, they enlist him to help crack a case involving a ring of art thieves...and promise that if he can help solve it, they'll pay the tuition at his private school.   Since his librarian dad just got laid off (side note:  African American father, very present in son's life, who is a librarian--yay!, library lay-offs, not yay), the tuition offer is so very sweet it can't be turned down (not that Edmund wants it turned down!).  And so Edmund starts staking out the art galleries of New York...and finds himself repeatedly squelched by the officer assigned to shepherd him through the detective work.

Fortunately Edmund has a buddy, Jonah, whose ADHD and OCD nature lends itself beautifully to the restless, obsessive compiling of data and searching for patterns.  And the two of them, now maverick operators with no NYPD support, close in on the art thieves just as they are about to carry out their next crime...

This was an immensely fun book--I loved Edmund's voice and his self-deprecating humor, and I bet I was grinning as I read.   I loved the relationship between his parents, and appreciated their realistic concerns for his safety.  I can't really speak to the logic of the puzzle at the heart of the book, because I am a bad reader of puzzle books (I'm more interested in character than clues), but it all seemed to make a certain amount of (admittedly improbable) sense. 

If you have a kid around who's ten or so who loves a good urban-kid-solving-mystery book, I pretty much can't recommend this more enthusiastically (although since I don't read this genre much, I don't have a solid basis for comparison).

If you want a book that shows an urban African American family with parents who are loving, well educated, and until recently able to afford an expensive private school; a book in which race is something that comes up naturally in the protagonist's thoughts and conversations without being an issue driving the story, and if you want a book that shows the black kid right there on the cover being the hero (in the book he's more organized and never lets his pictures fall like that)--  this, I can say without any doubts at all, is a great book for you!

It is also the only book I have ever read in which the hero puts on his mom's Beyoncé wig from a costume party as the finishing touch to his disguise as a girl scout.

"I pin the hair back with one of my mom's hairclips.  Not bad, I think, turning to the side and checking out my new look.  I am innocent.  A sweet, geeky girl, perfect to let into your house and catalog your most expensive possessions.

I open the door.  Jonah stands there, eyes bulging out.  A strange noise gurgles in his throat.  Clutching his pants, he turns on his heel and sprints down the hallway.  I hear the bathroom door slam, followed by peals of laughter.  He better not have peed on the floor mid run."  (p. 200)

So I'm glad I bought it.  And here's another review, at Ms. Yingling Reads.

(Just for the record, today I also bought Boys of Blur, by N.D. Wilson, but that I had to order). 

5/2/14

And now here are my ten-year-old's favorite books with multicultural characters, plus thinking ahead to book shopping tomorrow!

Continuing the Fun with Diverse Books, here's a quick list of great books with multicultural characters to offer your ten-year-old reader of fantasy, as selected by my own dear child.

Astronaut Academy Zero Gravity (2011), and  Astronaut Academy Re-Entry (2013), by Dave Roman, are wonderfully imaginative graphic novels, arguably more sci fi than fantasy.  There's a diverse cast of characters, many of whom are deeply loveable.



Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin (2009)  I have yet to meet a kid (even my older very picky reader!) who didn't enjoy this lovely story set in a fantasy China.  Both the illustrations and the writing are lovely! 

Jinx (2013) and Jinx's Magic (2014), by Sage Blackwood, is one of those blink-and-you'll-miss-it examples of diversity--the title character has brown skin, and it is mentioned in passing.   (I think we need lots of books in which people just happen to be all sorts of people, that can't be Labeled particular things, because of course readers are all sorts of people themselves).  It's one of my son's favorite series.

Likewise, it's mentioned in passing that the hero of  The Menagerie (2013), and Dragon on Trial (2014) by Tui T. Sutherland and Kari Sutherland, is African American.   Any reader who loves magical creatures should check out this series! 

My Neighbor Totoro (the novel), by Tsugiko Kubo (2013)-- I myself love this book tons.  It's very faithful to movie--all the gentle, sweet magic and family love is there in full force.

And finally, my son wants to make sure I include the Spirit Animal series (the first of which is Wild Born by Brandon Mull (2013), staring a group of kids that includes a girl from a fantasy China and one from a fantasy Africa, and they are shown beatufully, though not very large, on the covers (of books 1 and 3, respectively):






















And even more finally, I just want to sneak in a mention of Dragonbreath, Book 2: Attack of the Ninja Frogs, by Ursula Vernon, because even though the main character, Suki, is a salamander, she is a really really cool salamander from Japan.



My ten-year-old will be an eleven-year-old next Wednesday...and for tomorrow's challenge of putting our money where our mouths (or fingers, since we're typing) are, I am walking up the hill to the closest bookstore (B. and N.) to buy a multicultural fantasy book or two for him because I am sure there will be lots to choose from ha ha and if that fails I will have to buy something on-line.  I say "ha ha" because every anniversary of my decision to look for multicultural books I go to the bookstore and last year I managed to happily buy The Summer Prince but it is not as though there are scads of mg sff books that we don't already have with kids of color on the covers....

But in any event,  if B. and N. has a copy of Nightingale's Nest, by Nikki Loftin, I will buy a copy of that because I think its publisher, Razorbill, should be rewarded to the gills for this cover, in particular because no particular ethnicity was specified for the character by the text.



Here are the details for tomorrow from the We Need Diverse Books website:

"On May 3rd, 2pm (EST), the third portion of our campaign will begin. There will be a Diversify Your Shelves initiative to encourage people to put their money where their mouth is and buy diverse books and take photos of them. Diversify Your Shelves is all about actively seeking out diverse literature in bookstores and libraries, and there will be some fantastic giveaways for people who participate in the campaign! More details to come!"


My most favorite sci fi and fantasy books with diversities of various sorts

Mostly when I blog about diverse science and fiction and fantasy for kids, the books are about characters who don't happen to be white, because other diversities (LGBT protagonists, and kids with disabilities that aren't magically cured being somewhat thin on the ground in speculative fiction books for kids and younger teens).   So just for kicks, here are my favorite spec fic books that including those diversities.

The first book I ever read (I think I was 15) in which the hero was in a loving, committed relationship with another man was The Door Into Fire, by Diane Duane, and I pretty much read this fantasy epic to pieces.  Herewiss is a magic user, his loved, Freelorn, is the exiled heir to a kingdom, and there is just tons of great fantasy world build and sexy times of all sorts.  I myself thought Freelorn was kind of wet (I think I just took against the name right from the beginning), and I was rooting for Herewiss' relationship with a really wonderful fire elemental being (who sometimes took male form, sometimes female, for the sexy good times)....because really a self-confident but poignantly vulnerable shape shifting elemental love interest is more interesting. The other two books in the series that were published (Door into Shadow, and The Door Into Sunset, are fine too, but not quite as preconception-of-sexuality shifting as this one was!

And at the same time, I was reading to pieces many of Marion Zimmer Bradely's Darkover books.  Thendara House, in which two women from different patriarchal societies (one is from Earth and one from Darkover) come to love each other, was a particular favorite, and can be read a stand-alone just fine.  I think I liked this one because I've always enjoyed reading about close communities of women--there's often a comfortable safeness to this sort of book, that in no way precludes emotional and external tensions and adventures, and I also love to read about struggles to navigate social norms in alien cultures.





My favorite spec fic protagonist with a disability (a damaged leg that causes him considerable pain) is Alan, from Sarah Reese Breennan's Demon's Lexicon series because I love him and he is wonderful and he is kind and smart and loves books and I love him.  And the books in which he appears are pretty darn good too.

My second favorite spec fic protagonist with a disability is Eugenides from Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series, who has only one hand.  He is awesome, and the books are awesome (especially The King of Attolia).   I am putting him after Alan because he is so awesome I can't even imagine crushing on him from afar in real life (perhaps in part because the relationship that he's actually in is so perfectly tight that there's no room for strangers to crush on him much).


For cultural and ethnic diversity reimagined in speculative fiction, Ursula le Guin is my go-to author.  Always Coming Home, is an novella set in the future that's situated within an anthropological framework based on Le Guin's extensive knowledge of Native North America.  It's taken me some years to realize how much I appreciate it, but after reliving it countless times while weeding the garden (a benchmark by which I measure books is how clearly and how often my mind offers them back to me again while weeding), I've realized that I truly love it. 

And the other Le Guin I must include is Four Ways to Forgiveness, four stories set on a planet and its moons where dark skinned people enslaved pale skinned people.  In order for this world to become part of the galactic community, the inequities of this culture must be resolved, and it's a difficult and painful process.   The characters in these stories are some of Le Guin's most memorable, which is saying  a lot.   And I'm also fond of this one for personal reasons--when I first met my husband, it had just come out, and both of us had it on our respective nightstands.



5/1/14

We Need Diverse Books!

The We Need Diverse Books Campaign is off and running!  Today folks are sharing there reasons why, and here is my younger son with his own sign--"We need diverse kid's books because it's easy for me to find kids like me in books but it's not easy for my friends!"

 
I've been trying to blog about books with diversity for the past five years (here's the post in which I get started), hunting out fantasy and sci fi books for kids in which the protagonists are kids who don't default to white. I want my boys to take it for granted that any kid, from any part of the world, can be the hero or heroine of a story. I've kept a list of the multicultural books I've reviewed here, and I've just started a new blog, Diversity in Science Fiction and Fantasy for Kids and Teens, where I'm posting them all in one place, to make them easier to find.  (I'd hoped to have more of reviews up there by today, but I found too many typos to make it go as quickly as I'd hoped!)

The We Need Diverse Books campaing continues tomorrow and the next day.  From the site:
 
"On May 2nd, the second part of our campaign will roll out with a Twitter chat scheduled for 2pm (EST) using the same hashtag. Please use #WeNeedDiverseBooks at 2pm on May 2nd and share your thoughts on the issues with diversity in literature and why diversity matters to you.
 
On May 3rd, 2pm (EST), the third portion of our campaign will begin. There will be a Diversify Your Shelves initiative to encourage people to put their money where their mouth is and buy diverse books and take photos of them. Diversify Your Shelves is all about actively seeking out diverse literature in bookstores and libraries, and there will be some fantastic giveaways for people who participate in the campaign! More details to come!"

The Dyerville Tales, by M.P. Kozlowsky

I read The Dyerville Tales (Walden Pond Press, middle grade, April 2014) avidly, with interest and enjoyment (though not true love), and usually when this happens it's easy for me to prattle on about the book's pleasing qualities.  But I find myself somewhat stuck as I try to write about this one, because I'm not entirely sure I can define why I enjoyed reading it, nor am I entirely sure I could successfully pick the young readers who would love it (though I'm sure they exist).

Vince Elgin has lived in an orphanage ever since the terrible fire that destroyed his home.  He knows it killed his mother, but nothing of his father was ever found....leaving Vince with horrible, desperately comforting, faith that his father will someday come back for him.   He tells the story of the fire over and over again to the other orphans, with its ending he has to keep believing--the arrival of the fiery dragon, and his father's disappearance in pursuit of it.  When word arrives at the orphanage that Vince's paternal grandfather has died, Vince knows he must go to Dyerville for the funeral--surely his father will be there.   And so he absconds from the orphanage, with little in the way of a plan, but with lots of hope.

He has something else as well.  The friend of Vince's grandfather who sent the death notice sent something else as well--a book in which he'd recorded all the grandfather's stories.   And as Vince makes his way through the cold winter to Dyerville, meeting friends and foes along the way, he reads these stories to himself and to others.   The fantastical journey described therein can't possibly be true, what with the evil witch, the blinded giant, the enchanted beasts, and the magical book.  But Vince has been practicing his belief in the impossible as hard as ever he can, and so he takes from his grandfather's story an answer, of a magical sort, that will finally give him peace.

The Dyerville Tales is two stories--the mundane world of Vince's journey, and the fantasy journey of his grandfather.  Both are somewhat episodic--Vince's journey in the real world less so--which I was perfectly comfortable with during the reading.  But I think that my reservation about the book comes from a sense that the thematic links aren't quite strong enough to ever make the two strands of stories, and even the stories within those strands, work together to make a coherent whole.  

And I was left with doubt about Vince's grandfather, as opposed to finding him and his life convincing emotionally--he must have been a real person, because there Vince is, but his life as told in the fantastically stories can't have been all there was to him, and we don't quite get to see any of that "real" person in our "real" world.  

I think, having now writing this, that the young reader I'd give this to would have to be one who loved fairy tales, who isn't the sort to come back to a parent after reading and say "but...but...."  A trusting sort of child, who doesn't have to have things make Sense.  Which, at this point in my life, isn't exactly me.

Here's another review, with fewer reservations, at Random Musings of a Bibliophile.

Disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

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