Fortune's Magic Farm, by Suzanne Selfors

Fortune's Magic Farm, by Suzanne Selfors (Little Brown 2009, 264pp)--released today!

Once the town was called Sunny Cove. Now it is Runny Cove, where the rain never stops. No sun has ever shone on ten year-old Isabelle, as she hurries to and from Mr. Supreme's Umbrella Factory, where almost all the townsfolk work. Everything has always been gray and mouldy and slug-strewn.

Except for the apple, a thing of beauty, that an elephant seal spits out at Isabelle one fateful day when she wanders down to the dismal town beach.

Isabelle's grandmother is sick, perhaps dying. The greedy umbrella factory owner is making his virtually-enslaved workers work even longer hours. Mama Lu, owner of the boarding house where Isabelle lives, has discovered Isabella's pet slugs, with disastrously salty consequences. It will take more than an apple, however beautiful, to put things right with Isabelle and her miserable town. It will take a whole garden.

Unable to stand her miserable town any longer, Isabelle journeys across the ocean (on the back of the same obliging elephant seal) to a paradise--a garden of wonderful delight, protected by magic from the greedy eyes of Mr. Supreme and his ilk. This is Fortune's magic farm, a nature preserve of magical plants (curative cherries, floating fronds, vice vines, magnetic mangoes and the like). It is Isabelle's birthright, and her responsibility.

But how can she enjoy paradise while the rain keeps falling on Runny Cove? Especially when she learns that her own parents, whom she never knew, were implicated in its disastrous fall into dampness? Keeping the farm going is vitally important--its plants exist no where else. But surely it is also important to help others (and Selfors does a very nice job with Isabelle's internal struggle here).

I enjoyed this one, especially the dystopia for the young reader that is Runny Cove. Unlike Isabelle, I was a little disappointed when the story took us off to Fortune's farm, where, instead of slugs and evil boarding house matrons, we encountered the pleasures of a sunny garden filled with whimsical magical plants. Maybe I'm just too cynical to enjoy whimsical magical plants, but the wonderful farm never felt as real as the miserable town. However, doubtless the target audience of ten year-oldish girls will find the garden delightful...

My dear husband accuses me, with some justice, of perpetrating gender stereotypes here. In my defense, even though there is a strong supporting character who is a boy, I doubt that any ten year-old male will be drawn to a book whose cover features a pink and purple umbrella, lots of pretty flowers, and a cute fuzzy animal. And a girl. So I will passing this book along to my public library, where it can find its female readership. Any time my husband wants to convince our boys to read it, he is welcome too...

Edited to add--well, I'm wrong here. In Fuse #8's review, she mentions a boy reader who enjoyed this a lot. It just goes to show. Maybe the slugs at the beginning will draw the boys in...

Do my sons have a date with Dr. Evil?

A couple of days ago there was an article in the Times Online about books and boys and reading, introducing a new series. It brings out the usual "data" about boys not wanting to read as much as girls, and offers a new series as a solution.

The new series, Project X, features three boys, Max, Ant and Tiger, and a girl, Cat, who is something of a tomboy. The four friends are pitched against Dr Evil, a wicked scientist who wants to shrink the world.

Sophie Quarterman, of the Oxford University Press, said the books had very fast-moving plots, plenty of computer-generated images and stories involving teamwork: this has been shown to appeal most to boys.

"Not really," says my son. "I like loners." That's my boy!

I also think it strange that computer-generated images are apparently a Good Thing. Um, Diary of a Wimpy Kid seems to be doing rather well. And I don't see why girls in boy books have to be "tomboys." Can't today's definition of "girl" include classic tomboyish behaviors?

And I am wondering in general about this whole Boys as Reluctant Reader business. It seems to me like it's becoming a oversimplified marketing ploy. I'm not an educator, and so I have little data of my own, but so far there has been no drop off in the reading enthusiasm of any of the eight year old boys I know...and the boys in my son's class are impressive readers. Yet I feel nervous, and anxious, and as though I should buy the Dr. Evil books right now, lest I doom my boys to a future with no books. Oh well. Maybe they are good in their own right.

Elephant Run, by Roland Smith

I am an enthusiastic reader of my blog stats--today was made more joyful by learning that mine is the second entry that Google shows when asked to find "experiences with demonic birds at sea." On a slightly more mundane note, it's become obvious that many students were asked to read Roland Smith's book, Peak (2007) for their summer reading, and that they didn't (lots of searchs for "plot summary peak" etc). I myself successfully read Peak last fall when it was nominated for the Cybils*, and I enjoyed it enough (here's my review) to see what else Smith had written. Another 2007 book, Elephant Run (Hyperion, 318 pp), caught my eye, and I recently made the time to read it.

London is being blitzed, and 14 year old Nick's mother thinks that it would be a good idea to get him out of there. So she sends him off to his father's teak plantation in Burma, where he hadn't been since he was a child. Turns out this was a bad, bad idea--almost immediately, the Japanese invade Burma, take over the plantation, and send Nick's father to a prison camp. Nick remains behind in servitude to the plantation's new Japanese overlord, until, with some unlikely companions, he escapes on elephant-back to rescue his father and race for the border into India.

This story makes for an exciting read, and I'd be happy to recommend it (probably more to boys than to girls), in large part because of its unusal subject matter and setting. There aren't, as far as I know, any other YA books designed to appeal to boys that address the Japanese conquest of east Asia in WW II. If I were a high school teacher of WW II history, I would defiantly put this book on my list of optional reading.

But I didn't find Nick believable as a boy from 1941 England--he came across as an out-of-shape contemporary American teenager (which perhaps means that the book will have more appeal to that audience). I felt that the relationships between the characters only existed to further the plot, not as things of interest in and of themselves (and as a result, I found the ending a bit contrived). This made it feel to me (possibly with complete injustice) as though Smith had set out to write a Book for Boys (see above), and therefore didn't bother too much with the interactions of his characters, which is the sort of thing that Girls like to read about. Although most of the story is told from Nick's point of view, several chapters are told from that of Mya, a teenaged Burmese girl who dreams of being an elephant trainer. This was useful plot-wise, but it didn't make Mya much more of a believable character in my eyes, and (cynic that I am) I found myself thinking that Smith had given Mya her own chapters to add Girl Appeal to his Boy Appeal. There is also a friendly and poetry-loving Japanese soldier, so that we don't fall into the trap of assuming everyone in the Japanese army is Evil.

I did enjoy reading it though--it is strong on setting and story! I guess my dissatisfaction comes from my hope that this would be comparable to Neville Shute's (a wondhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.giferful book), and (since that is such a wonderful book) I was bound to feel a bit let down.

*The Cybils are awards given by the kidslit blogging community to the best books in several categories. Nominations for this years awards (anyone can nominate their favorites) will be starting in October. Here's the Cybil's website for more info.

Give the Gift of 2007's YA Books

I’ve been busily reading as many of the YA fiction books nominated for the Cybils as I can (up at 5:30am today, 1 ½ books read…). It’s not just reading them, which is fairly straightforward, it’s deciding if they are Good. And one of the factors that constitutes Good in this case is Teen Appeal.

I don’t have any teenagers to buy presents for this Christmas, but I thought that making a list of what books I would give, if I did, might help me sort out how appealing I think some of them are. The list that follows isn't my official Top 10 list, and I have left out a bunch of good books because I think they are simply too depressing to give as happy holiday presents (so although there is one Bad Thing in one of the following books, they are, for the most part, cheerful).

For a Seventh or Eight Grader, boy or girl:

The Wednesday Wars, by Gary Schmidt. I laughed and I cried over this one. Boy and teacher start the year out at war with each other (at least in his mind), but after a few escaped rats, a bit of Shakespeare, and some baseball (the Yankees are the team of choice here, so perhaps not the best gift for Red Sox fans), all is well.

Lemonade Mouth, by Mark Peter Hughes. 5 misfit kids form a band and make friends (in that order). It’s told from the perspective of each of the kids (2 boys and 3 girls), hence its cross gender appeal.
My review

For Older Teens

I’m going with the Gendered Recommendation thing here, which I feel ambivalent about, partly because there are fewer “boy” books I’d buy as presents than there are girl books (1 vs 5), and partly because I think girls are expected to read books with boy heroes and accept that as normative, whereas boys are rarely (I think) given books with girl heroes…*

For a teenaged boy:

Peak, by Roland Smith. I think that loosing part of your ear because it has frozen to the outside of a New York skyscraper is a pretty zippy way to begin a book; it goes on to take the hero to the top of Mt. Everest. Good adventure, interesting characters.
My review

For a teenaged girl who is Romantic, and might in general prefer fantasy:

Red Glass, by Laura Resau. I love this magical, beautiful book about a girl’s journey to Mexico and Latin America, where she must find the courage to go on a quest to save the boy she loves. Full of wonderful people and great images, it also provides a perspective on issues of immigration that I think is very valuable.
My review

For a teenaged girl who is smart with a great sense of humor:

Carpe Diem, by Autumn Cornwall. This book takes an uptight, over achieving girl named Vassar Spore and throws her into the jungles of South East Asia with a nutty grandma and a cute Malaysian cowboy wanabe. Lots of fun!
My review

Other books for girls, that are excellent reads but aren’t lending themselves to easy categorization:

Beauty Shop for Rent, by Laura Bowers
Billie Standish Was Here, by Nancy Crocker
Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend, by Carrie Jones my review

For just about anyone:

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. I have already lent my Cybils review copy to several other adults, which I usually don’t feel compelled to do.

Like I said above, these aren’t necessarily the 2007 YA books I think are the Best, but rather the ones I think make good presents! I’ve also only read about half of the 123 nominated books, so I might add more to this list. Other suggestions (from 2007 only) welcome! But please, none of the dark ones. You can give those for birthdays or something.


*Liz at A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy is currently gathering a list of YA boy’s books, which makes up a bit for the fact that I'm only recommending one...