Books I'm looking forward too....

First on my list is Forever Rose, by Hilary Mckay, the most recent book about the Casson family (Saffy's Angel, etc.). It came out in England last fall, but won't be out in the US till this summer. The copy I'm going to be reading is currently in New York, at my sister's house; every time I talk to her I encourage her to come visit, so as to bring it with her. I have also offered to pay for postage.

I am also looking forward to Lavinia, by Ursula Le Guin (April 2008), House of Many Ways, by Diana Wynne Jones (June 2008), and Knight Errant, by Patricia McKillip (Sept. 2008) (which shows up on the list of forthcoming books here at locus online). I also am looking forward very much to Megan Whalen Turner's next book, but she hasn't finished it yet. I think that all my life I will be looking forward to her next book, so I hope she outlives me.

I will eagerly pounce on Love (and Other Uses for Duct Tape) by Carrie Jones (sequel to Cybils finalist Tips on having a Gay (ex)Boy Friend).

Finally, and most obscurely, I'm looking forward with great anticipation to Kate at Melling, by Margaret Biggs. This is a new book written by the author of a great English girls school series (Melling being the school). The series, originally all published before 1960, has been republished by Girls Gone by Publishers, and the author has written this brand new story!

Colleen at Chasing Ray is kindly rounding up other lists of anticipation!

Amoung the 50 Greatest British Writers...

I recently saw a list in the Times the 50 greatest post-war British writers. There were plenty of usual suspects, but three caught my eye--Philippa Pearce, Alan Garner, and Rosemary Sutcliff. The other children's book author's were Dahl, Lewis, Peake and Rawling, but that was less surprising.

Rosemary Sutcliff is the best writer of juvenile historical fiction that ever was, and I am very happy to see her on this list. Read The Mark of the Horselord. Eagle of the Ninth. Warrior Scarlet. You'll see what I mean. They are great stories, and I learned lots.

In this vein, I am looking forward to reading Good Masters, Sweet Ladies (which won the Newbery a few hours ago), although not the un-read first edition pre-sticker copy I just bought (which will be saved until it's time to pay for the kids to go to college). The illustrations remind me of Walter Hodges, who illustrated quite a few Rosemary Sutcilffs, and who is my favorite illustrator of things medieval. But of course since I did not open my new copy of G.M, S.L., not wanting to damage it, I can't be quite sure...

Learning to read

Over at Jen Robinson's Book Page, there's a great post up on helping kids learn to read--lots of ideas from parents (including moi), teachers, and writers. Another point has just occurred to me, and I think it's important enough that it deserves a post of its own.

So often it seems like reading level is used as a measure in intelligence--"Oh, you're reading War and Peace and you're only 8! How smart you must be!" If you aren't reading "big books" at that age, it might then seem as though you are stupid. My second grader isn't stupid (ask him to explain String Theory, and he'll do fine), but there are many, many kids who are reading books considerably harder than the Magic Treehouse books he's plodding through. So I've made a point of explaining to him that each person's brain develops at its own pace, and in some people, different parts develop faster--some kids talk before they walk, some walk before they talk. I tell him he has a very well-developed math brain, and a great kindness brain (except for whacking his little brother), and tell him that in a few more years, when his brain has developed a bit more, no one will be able to guess that his classmates had ever read harder books than he was reading. I often remind him of what he was reading in past years, so he can fully realize he's making progress. Three December 31sts in a row, he's read A Fly Went By, by Mike McClintock. The first time through, it took three painful days. Next year, 25 minutes, reading out loud. This year, about 20, read to himself. So he can really see he's getting there.

Otherwise, I think it would be so easy for him to just think "I'm a bad reader." A self-fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one.

On My Block: Stories and Paintings by 15 Artists

On my Block: Stories and Paintings by Fifteen Artists Edited by Dana Goldberg (2007, Children's Book Press).

This beautiful book was another I won through participating in the blogging about Robert's Snow, and the auctioning of snowflakes created by children's illustrators (the other book was Block Party Today!; perhaps if there had been more books about Blocks I would have won them too...). My copy came from Sara Kahn, one of the many (well, 15) artists featured in this book.

Children's Book Press asked 15 illustrators "to portray, in words and pictures, the places that are most special to them." The result is an eclectic, colorful mix of pictures and stories, that makes for very enjoyable browsing. The reader is taken on a journey around the world--from Mexico, to Cuba, to Iran (to name just three of the fifteen). It is a great showcase of variety (both artistic and cultural), but at the same time it's held together by common themes of nostalgia and love.

This book, for me at least, floats in the world between children's and adult books. My children (4 and 7) enjoyed looking at it, but it's perhaps more a dipping into book for that age than a read through. Adults might get more from it--this would be a great gift for fans of children's book illustration.

There's another review of this up here, at AmoXcalli.

I certainly enjoyed it-- thanks very much, Sara, and thanks for making your beautiful snowflake! To see her snowflake, and read a great interview with her, head over here to Kate Messner's blog.

Cybils YA finalists announced

They're up! Head over here to the Cybils website to see our masterful list of 7 brilliant YA titles...

Block Party Today!

Block Party Today! By Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Stephanie Roth (2004, Random House).

Last fall, many of us were busy promoting Robert's Snow, and the wonderful snowflakes created by children's book illustrators that were auctioned off to raise money for cancer research. As well as donating their time for snowflake making, many of these great illustrators offered prizes to folks reading the snowflake posts. I was lucky enough to receive a copy of Block Party Today! from Stephanie Roth, and now I don't have to worry about reading 123 YA books for the Cybils (see below), I'm happy to have a chance to say Thanks! And what a neat book!

Block Party Today! is about (surprise) a block party, in a multicultural urban place pretty far removed from where my kids live (a New England mill village). They were most interested in the street scenes, the different people, and the whole concept of closing off a street for a party. Roth's illustrations are great-colorful and detailed, interesting without being overwhelming. This is more than just a description of the party, though--Lola is mad at her friends Yasmin and Sue, and plans to stay in her room all day. She can't help but come down to her front steps, and she and Yasmin and Sue forget their quarrel in the fun of fire hydrant play. And the block party ends happily, with friendship triumphant. Just what a block party is supposed to do!

Thanks, Stephanie,for the book, and for making your snowflake (a really charming one, featuring Two Christmas Mice, which you can see here at the blog Writing with a Broken Tusk).

My Cybils work is done

I was up until 2am yesterday, working with my co-committee members to pick our 7 nominations for the Young Adult Cybils Awards. We had 123 books to pick from... They'll be announced tomorrow over at the Cybils website.

Thanks very much to Jackie, of Interactive Reader, who was our fearless leader! And thanks to all the rest of the gang--it was great fun working with you.

And a very big thanks to all the publishers and authors who made copies of their books available to us--they were much appreciated! I've passed most of my copies on to my local library, which will now have the best YA collection in the state of RI.

Finch Goes Wild

Finch Goes Wild, by Janet Gingold (Perfect Paperback, 2007)

Harmon Finch’s life is getting ugly. He’s stopped trying for decent grades at his savage middle school— a place where turning homework in invites violent reprisals from bullies. His doctor tells him that he has to get his weight under control, or else. His mom is driving him mad with her constant fussing. On the plus side, he has a nice dad (and his mother does love him lots), a comfortable house, a good brain and musical talent, and most importantly, a chance to take time away from the chaos of school and find his way into a different kind of “wild.”

Home schooling doesn’t alienate Harmon from his friends, because he has none. But it does give him the opportunity to head out with his dog into the nearby park. He spends more and more of his time there, first as a volunteer for a home schooling assignment, and then because he has been drawn into the world of bird watching. I might be making it sound more facile than the book reads, but in essence Harmon “grows up” as a result of bird watching, and it enables him to start high school a new, more physically fit, more confident person.

Harmon is a very likable character—sincere and well-meaning. He happens to be African-American—a black person who has a supportive, well-off family and who ends the book by going to Cornell. His ethnicity is not an Issue, but does come up casually from time to time (for example, musing about why he is the only black birdwatcher at the Christmas Bird Count). It’s also good to read a book that talks matter of factly about teen weight issues, and about home schooling (which is described in interesting detail). This is a very clean read—not for Harmon the escapades of other fictional youth. Harmon’s story wasn’t one that thrilled me to the core, but I’m glad it ended happily.

Because Harmon is a loner, there is a paucity of supporting cast, and not much dynamic interaction. The only character who appears long enough to have a chance at characterization is his mother; unfortunately, she is pretty much defined solely by her nagging nervousness, and although Harmon is stuck with her almost the whole book, she never becomes a person. Also, the bird watching was at times too meticulously described--people that don't know birds might have trouble staying interested, and people that do know them might find themselves reading these parts of the book rather skimmingly.

But heck. A book about a bird-watching teenager made a nice change—it was good to go off into the wild with Harmon.

Finch Goes Wild was one of the 123 books nominated for the YA category of the Cybils.

Congratulations, Patrick

I am proud as all get out that my dear husband Patrick's entry in Lisa Yee's Second Annual Bodacious Book Contest was judged Honor Title #1.

Here's his entry:

Original title: Now We Are Six
New Title: Now We Are Ticks
Summary: Kafka's Metamorphosis for the younger reader
Judges’ comments: The two books are such polar opposites, and somehow this contestant found a connection. Besides, we both love Kafkaesque tales for children…Louis the Fish, Shoebag, and now, Now We are Ticks.

Of course, this means that his entry beat mine, with ensuing residual bitterness which I am bravely hiding.

Thanks very much Lisa and judges!

More about reading for the Cybils

"Why is my backpack so heavy, Mama?" asked my 7 year old plaintively, as we travelled south for the holidays. Because Mama still had 12 more books to read in the next 5 days. And very excitingly on the personal level, this was the first airplane trip in seven years on which I was able to read a book from cover to cover! (It was In Search of Mockingbird, by Loretta Ellsworth, a very topical book for the reader who is travelling, in as much as it is about a bus journey from Minnesota, or somewhere northish like that, to Alabama).

Now the end of the Cybils is in sight, and there are only four book left on my list of must reads...

Reading YA for the Cybils la la la

Seven more books arrived at my house yesterday, and I am realizing that I am flying to D.C. tomorrow, and they plus a few other piles are going to be going with me unless I read them all tonight although what with packing and taking the cat to the vet and getting the car inspected and buying a few more presents I do not think this will happen.

I had a bad dream last night that Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand was nominated for the YA Cybils, and I had to read it by Friday. I woke up sweating.

Link to an interview with Carrie Jones

Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend was one of my favorite books this year, so I was happy to learn via this interview with its author, Carrie Jones, that several more books are in the pipeline...including this intriguing one, which has not yet gotten its final title: "After Zara’s dad dies and a strange man keeps appearing around her house, her mother sends her to Maine to live with her grandmother, straight into the territory of a stalking pixie king."

My mind boggles.

There's another great interview with Carrie over at Becky's Book Reviews.

Diana Wynne Jones --a winner!

This oldish news, but still. Diana Wynne Jones, an author I adore, has been given the 2007 World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement (horray!) and here is a link to her acceptance speech.

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...

Books are being given away...

Lisa Schroeder is giving away 12 YA books for the 12 days of Christmas-- today is Day Three, so there are still lots left.

And today Jo Knowles is offering a signed copy of Lessons from a Dead Girl...

Good luck to all entrants, but especially to me :)

New Paddington Book

From the BBC Website:

"Paddington, the bear from Peru, will be arrested and interrogated over his immigration status in a book marking his 50th birthday. Paddington Here and Now, due to be published in June 2008, is set around the bear's home at 32 Windsor Gardens, Notting Hill, west London.

It will mark the 50th anniversary of his debut in A Bear Called Paddington.

Author Michael Bond, 83, who lives in London, said while the world had changed Paddington remained the same."

Carpe Diem, by Autumn Cornwell

16 year old Vassar Spore takes it for granted that her life will continue on smoothly in its pleasant path of over achieving. She plans to finish high school with a 5.3 gpa (the new 4.0), head off to Vassar (her name is no coincidence) and keep heading on up until she gets a Pulitzer prize, backed all the way by her overachieving (but happily married and supportive) parents.

Then her parents are blackmailed (mysteriously!) by her grandmother, who is off in south east Asia living a wild artistic life, and Vassar finds herself forced onto a plane to join her. She packs (10 matching bags), she plans (think Scaredy Squirrel here), she tries to stay in control, but Grandma Gerd, squat toilets, humongous centipedes, and a quite cute Malaysian cowboy wannabe called Hanks conspire against her. Until one night, trapped in an opium den in a Laotian village beyond any beaten trail, she ... basically, she seizes the day.

This is a very fun romp, verging on farcical, but not so much so as to obscure the nicely written character development and great travel writing!

And nobody dies.

Here's Autumn Cornwell's website. And here's a longer review, written by a Cybil's team-mate, back in August when there was more time...

PS. Scaredy Squirrel, by Melanie Watt, is also a great book.

Reading YA for the Cybills

I have reached a milestone in my YA Cybills reading--of the 123 books nominated, I have now read 50. It's getting to me, though--I had a nightmare last night in which I was trapped in a high school clique of Mean Girls, who savagely tore into a Nice Girl who had been their friend....(which I'm sure had everything to do with reading too much too fast about fictional high schools and nothing to do with my fellow nominating committee members, who are not mean at all. Or at least, they haven't shown it. Yet. But, then again, we haven't started sweetly discussing/ fighting over which books will make the short list...).

Anyway, someday I want to review many of the 50 I've read, but not today. The clock is ticking.

Win a basket of books over at A Readable Feast

For a chance to win a basket of books that is indeed a readable feast for the young, head over here to A Readable Feast (by December 12th). Lots of luscious books from Little Brown...

Owly #4 -- A Time To Be Brave

A Time To Be Brave, the fourth book in Andy Runton's Owly series has just been released! It is just as wonderfully emotionally manipulative (in a good way) as the previous books, as one can see from the cover. Although this is not actually a grave, as I thought at first, but merely a broken tree. But as one who has wept over beloved plants, it is still a wrenching image.

In this book, Owly and Wormy and the gang make a new friend, a possum (I call him "Possumy"), the wonderful lessons from the first Owly book are brought back--don't judge a book by its cover/things you think are fierce can be friends/owls (and possums, in this case), have feelings too/it's ok to cry. Plenty of tears are shed, plenty of courage must be found, and in the end (spoiler) possum is a New Friend.

I love Owly and Wormy, especially the first book. But this new one is my second favorite. And only in part because it is printed on 100% recycled paper!
(how great is that!)

Any Owly fan should visit the Owly Store, where one can buy, among other things, original Owly artwork and Owly and Wormy hats, each hand made by Andy Runton's mom. What a cool mom.

A poetry parlour game

Many Christmases ago, my sister gave me a little book entitled "A Century of Charades," by William Bellamy, published in 1894, followed in later years by "A Second Century of Charades," and then a third. These charades are the old fashioned kind--riddles in poetry, with the clues to the answer given syllable by syllable. A perfect peaceful parlour game for anyone planning a Victorian Christmas, or for those who like riddles.

Here's an example, with the answer:

"That my first is my second, all good people know;
My whole is a sailor who drew a long bow."

The first syllable is sin, the second bad, the whole is Sinbad.

Here are some more, without the answers, taken from "The Second Century of Charades." They are in order of difficulty.

I. My first, the end of riches,
My last, the Irish sea,
And one of the trials of authors
I find my whole to be.

II. If you were my first, and my second were nigh,
You'd acknowledge my whole, though it might seem awry;
And the state of my whole need not cause you alarms,
Though beaten he was by his colleague in arms.

III. My first:
I am the spur to many a Yankee notion.
I cause remittent, not continual, motion.

My second:
Oh Child, who reason for all things wouldst know,
I show not cause, but purpose oft I show.

My whole:
To ease an aching head I cross the sea.
Stern Winter's treasures are looked up in me.

IV. This tale is true beyond dispute:
two fishes joined, and made a fruit.
A fruit that in a garden grew,
And brought great harm to me and you.
The evil serpent coiled without,
The worm of death lay hid within,
Eve brought this dreadful thing about;
When Adam ate with her, no doubt
But you and I committed sin.

All of these charade books can be found online as PDFs if you are intrigued. Here's the first century, here's the second. Mr. Bellamy provided answers encoded as numbers in the back of each book, but with the stern warning that "working backward from the answers is not solving charades." My sister and I did not listen, and being totally stumped by the majority of the charades, spent a lot of time working backward.

Here are the encoded answers for the above, but I'm not telling which anwer goes with which riddle (this is how Mr. Bellamy did it in the Second Century).

1443534
3542442
54415
3131353


Here is the key--the numbers mean that one letter in that column is the correct one:
1 2 3 4 5
A B C D E
F G H I J
K L M N O
P Q R S T
U V W X Y


So then you can see what words you can make with the letters in each given column, and see if any fits the clues!

clue for the fourth one- think of types of fish.

This is my contribution to Poetry Friday--the roundup is at Becky's Book Reviews today!

Another Kind of Cowboy

Today's featured YA book is Another Kind of Cowboy, by Susan Juby. It's a good read, in the best sense of the term.

I like a book that gives me thick description* of something I know little about--with reference to books, I'm thinking really dense and knowledgable descriptions of a craft or practice that is an integral part of the character's experience, not tacked on to add some sort of "color." Reading Peak, I learned about mountain climbing, Dramarama immersed me in the preforming arts, and even Dairy Queen, and its Cybil nominated sequel, The Off Season, taught me quite a bit about football.

With Another Kind of Cowboy, the area of thick description is the art of dressage--the almost telepathic interaction in which a rider sits on horse who progresses gracefully through a series of changes of gait, direction, etc. Alex and Cleo are both students of this art--Alex because it is his passion, Cleo because she has no other passion. For Alex, a gay teen with a dad who wants him to be a Manly Cowboy, this world of costly horses, gear, and lessons is a dream he has to struggle to make real; for Cleo, an entitled rich kid sent off to a horsey boarding school, it is primarily a thing her parents have made easy for her.

Alex's story is told in the third person, Cleo's in the first. This makes it rather ironic that Alex is the character whose portrayal is rich, deep, and compelling. Cleo's light voice natters on, without revealing much depth, but the narrator gives Alex's feelings and focus a gentle weight that makes him a very real person. In a way, how the writer treats each character is a lot like how the characters treat their horses. Cleo has a cavalier attitude to her incredibly talented and expensive horse--she doesn't warm her up in advance of competition, she doesn't look after her gear. The relationship between rider and horse is distant. Alex is the opposite--his horses come first.

I was kind of hooked on this book from the beginning, just from nostalgia. The main character pretends his bike is a horse--grooming it, training it, practicing dressage and horse jumping while riding around and around the driveway. I didn't take it quite as far as he does, but still, the thought was there. This is a book I'd happily recommend to any teen who loves horses, and any teen who just wants a really good book.

Here's another review by a co-Cybilian, at the Ya Ya Yas.




*not the Geertzian type of thick description, although I like that too and at some point I might sit down and write a Geertzian analysis of a scene or two from some of the high school books I've just been reading--alien cultures indeed.

Waterstone's Childrens book prize short list

So it's not the most earth shaking award, but heck. It's always good to know what's happening Over There. Waterstone's, the British book store chain, has announced its shortlist of books nominated for the Waterstone's Children's book prize:

Tumtum and Nutmeg by Emily Bearn (Egmont)
Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine (HarperCollins)
Stone Goblins by David Melling (Hodder Children's Books)
Blue Sky Freedom by Gabrielle Halberstam (Macmillan)
Between Two Seas by Marie-Louise Jensen (OUP)
Shadow Forest by Matt Haig (RHCB)*
Ancient Appetites by Oisín McGann (RHCB)
TIM, Defender of the Earth by Sam Enthoven (RHCB)
Ways to Live Forever by Sally Nicholls (Scholastic)

This award "focuses on emergent authors who have had up to three books published." I guess if you have four books published, you've emerged, and there you are.

I haven't heard of any of these, let alone read them. Probably because they aren't here in the US yet, and I haven't had a chance to run over to the UK for book shopping recently. But I guess its good to know that once the Cybils reading is done (about 75 more books to go) there will be other books to read...

Here's the full article.

*(The US title of this is Samuel Blink and the Forbidden Forest. Not a change for the better, in my opinion. From the website: Samuel "has no idea a giant log is about to fall from the sky and change his life forever."Hmm).

From Toddler Story Time to the YA Section

I was hanging out at the library yesterday, yakking to our children's librarian about getting new shelves for the YA section, so as to have room for the influx of YA books that is coming (I'm handing over the bulk of the review copies I've gotten as a result of being on the YA Cybils nominating committee).

And then a strange thing happened. A grown woman entered the YA section, and found two books to read for herself (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 and 3), and chatted to our librarian briefly about what other books she might enjoy. Apparently the mothers of toddlers that come to the library for story time are discovering the wonders of YA, sharing with each other books they have enjoyed.

When you think about it, mothers of very young children are a prefect audience for a large part of the YA genre- the stories of girls entering a new and stressful period of their lives, not being able to spend time with old friends, or having less in common with them, and having to shoulder new responsibilities and forge new relationships. And there are many YA books of this ilk that focus on, or at least include, very positive female to female relationships-- the sort that new, perhaps lonely, mothers might find comforting. And finally, there's also the fact that a YA book is generally shorter than an A book.

But mothers reading YA books must be very careful, because of the Dark Side of the genre (which goodness knows is out in force with this year's crop of books)--plenty of horrible things happen to kids that are very upsetting to mothers, who (if they are like me) are prone to imagining the same thing happening to their own precious babies...like one book I just read that opens with a poor kid getting kicked in the balls by other boy scouts (This is What I did)*, and this is mild. Sigh.

*I'm not going to be reviewing This is What I Did, because I find it too worrying, and am not sure I can be objective, but here's a review over at Becky's Book Reviews, for those who are curious.

Say Hola to Spanish, Otra Vez (Again!)

My local school system recently introduced a Chinese language program. This inspired one resident to write an editorial to the local newspaper, celebrating the fact that the schools were not teaching a language that encouraged illegal immigration (!!!??!). I'm pretty happy that my kids are learning Spanish at school (and I doubt that statistics on how much Spanish is being taught in the USA is really something that people consider when deciding to cross the border).

My Spanish, however, is pathetic, and I can't help my boys at all, other than by letting them teach me. So I was pleased as punch to find a great book at my library that not only taught us all some new Spanish words, but was fun to read out loud, and charmingly illustrated: Say Hola to Spanish, Otra Vez (Again)! by Susan Middleton Elya and Loretta Lopez (1999). Sadly, the library doesn't have their first collaboration--Say Hola to Spanish (1998), but I'm sure it's good too.

Other first words in Spanish books I've read (around 3) have little textual zest. But Elya manages to swing the words right along, tricky when there's no narrative and the punch words are in Spanish-- "Here is a rata, here's a raton. There in the water! A big tiburon!" (please imagine accents as appropriate). There's a pronunciation guide/translations of the words at the end, for us Spanish challenged In a nutshell, we had a great time reading this book repeatedly, and if the Holiday Mug fundraiser goes well (zero mugs sold to date), I'll be buying the first book for reasons that are not entirely self-less. And if we sell lots of mugs, I'll also buy Hola to Spanish at the Circus (2003), although I can't help but feel that the vocabulary might be less immediately useful.

Any other recommendations for Spanish instructional type books?

Outside the Box, by Dan Allosso

Outside the Box, by Dan Allosso (2007), is a book that I can happily recommend to reluctant teen readers, kids who feel alienated from their peers, who resent mindless consumerism and conformity, who are grappling with the injustices that the bureaucracy perpetuates on kids who are being abused, overmedicated, or judged mentally ill, and finally, kids that like computer games.

Now, I am not any of these things, mainly because I am no longer a kid—I do, however, resent mindless consumerism and conformity, and being a bureaucrat myself, I sometimes chafe against the shackles my job involves. But in short, I am not the target audience as such. So I approached this book doubtfully.

My doubts intensified when a demonic presence appeared in a computer game on page 9. A demonic presence that was not part of the game as marketed, but that appeares specifically to communicate with Reid, the teen-aged protagonist...I wondered if I was in the wrong genre. And at first I was not drawn to Reid--he's a bored, spoiled rich kid with distant parents, and not immediately engaging. However, the plot thickens, more people become involved, and the pace picks up...

And today, there I was, reading it in the car on the way to work (my husband was driving), so that I could finish it (and not just so as to reach my 2.5 YA books a day quota. I was just really interested). And I’m very glad Dan Allosso is working on a sequel, because there are still Unsolved Mysteries (and as yet unrealized Romance—this is not a book about teens falling in love; this is only in the whisperiest bit of sub plot. Which makes a change). And as well as wanting more answers, I quite simply look forward to spending more time with the people in the book.

I’m not going to run through the plot—this book has a mystery at its heart (the demon in the game), and I don’t want to spoil anyone else’s fun. But I will say—there are well-defined characters (including a strong female lead) and an intriguing story line that kept me page turning (it requires slightly more suspension of disbelief than I like, but it’s within the realm of actual possibility, if there is such a thing). Dan Allosso has written a book that has points he wants to make, and at times these points are stated rather baldly, but heck, they’re good points—the importance of committing to friends, the importance of asking questions instead of sidestepping issues, and of course, the value of thinking outside the box, so the didactic aspect did not stop me in my reading tracks.

Outside the Box has been nominated for the YA Cybils Award, and copies duly arrived in all the mailboxes of us nominators, which we appreciate. This book was self-published, and as such, it strikes me as just the sort of thing the Cybils were designed to promote—the really good reads that might otherwise not get the attention they merit. Head over here for more information about the book and its author.

The Cybils--YA Books, plus Holiday Mugs

The final list of books nominated for the YA Cybils Award is up at Interactive Reader, the home of our fearless leader, Jackie. We will be agreeing (one hopes) on our picks for the short list at the end of December. Jackie has assured us folks on the nominating committee that we do not have to read every book. I dunno--it would only be 2 1/2 a day...

However. It is also Holiday Mug making time here in our little corner of Rhode Island, when, in a fit of total insanity, the boys and I fill the dining room with baskets of treats, ornaments, and sundries, and fill mugs ($5 each, for the library). It is their chance to Help the Community, I tell myself, as the chaos mounts. Fortunately, neither of them are candy eaters, which just leaves me. Sigh. So every morning I am faced with difficult decisions--try to organize things, or read YA books. Things remain unorganized.

And please, please, this year let someone buy the mug that plays jingle bells whenever one walks by it...I don't think I can stand having it on the kitchen shelf another year.

New Carnival Up!

The November Carnival of Children's Literature is up and running at Mother Reader! It is a Carnival of Tips about reading, writing, blogging, etc etc...I missed the boat on this one (couldn't think of anything tippish), but it looks like a great collection!

Itty and Bitty -- Rose Mary Berlin

Itty and Bitty are two miniature horses who live in Texas, and who have their own website here. They are cute as buttons in real life, and also as pictured by Rose Mary Berlin in their latest story book --Itty and Bitty, Friends on the Farm (by Nancy Carpenter Czerw, 2006). I recently had the pleasure of reading Itty and Bitty to my boys (7 and 4), thanks to Rose Mary Berlin, who kindly sent us a copy. They were both utterly charmed by the funny pictures of the little horses (and went off and played with their own toy horses, which had been gathering dust for months, so it was all to the good). These are the sort of pictures where the everyday becomes silly--I especially like the picture of Itty and Bitty on their moped, racing to keep up with the big guys. The text appealed to me less than the pictures, being the sort of writing where rhyme and rhythm take precedence over everything else, but it didn't bother the boys.

I first met the work of Rose Mary Berlin when I featured her snowflake for the Robert's Snow Auction (more information at right). Her truly adorable penguin is up for auction RIGHT NOW (until Friday, Nov. 30).

Upcoming Carnival!

The Deadline for the Nov. Carnival of Children's Literature is tomorrow at 9 am --head over to Mother Reader, this month's host, for more information!

Peak, by Roland Smith

Peak, by Roland Smith, is a YA book I wouldn't have read if it hadn't been nominated for the Cybils Awards. Not that I only read books that are pink, but I am drawn more to books about girls, and the only girls here are two six-year old twins who get very little page time. However, there Peak was, fresh from its publisher (Harcourt Children's Books--thanks!), and after spending about a week's worth of reading in American high school settings, a book about a teenager climbing Mount Everest seemed, as it were, a breath of cool air.

Peak is a 14 year old New Yorker, the child of two great mountain climbers (now divorced), with a penchant for climbing himself. There being rather few mountains in New York city, he practices on sky scrappers, and as the book opens, he is about to complete one of his trickiest climbs yet. But he gets caught, the media gets a hold of his exploits, and another kid is killed trying to copy him. Getting Peak out of New York seems like a good idea to both parents, so his father (who organizing climbs up Everest) whisks him off to the Himalayas, and basically says--Son, you will be the youngest person to ever reach the top.

What follows is Peak's journal about training for the climb, enduring a great deal of cold boredom, and the fits and starts process of making it up the mountain. At the same time, he's doing some hard thinking about his relationships with his family, and about the people with whom he is climbing (in particular Sun-jo, a Nepalese boy a few days younger). The ending is satisfying, and the journey is educational for both Peak and the reader.

I don't know a darn thing about mountain climbing, but it seemed to me that Smith knows his stuff--at least he convinced me with his wealth of detail about the people and process of climbing Everest. There's also a dollop of geography and history here too. I like this sort of thick description in a book--when well done, as it is here (ie not heavy handed, intrusive, and condescending)it makes a story that has been told many times before (boy grows up when faced with physical challenge) fresh and rewarding.

Here's a link to Roland Smith's website, for more reviews and information. His new book, Elephant Run, sounds pretty good too...It will, however, have to wait while I read the 85 or so books nominated for the YA Cybils Award that I haven't read yet.

For Poetry Friday: Epistle to be Left on Earth

Here's a poem I love that always comes to mind this time of year. I love it for the utter beauty of the pictures the words make...

I am having trouble formating it as the poet intended, so please take a look at it here, because the formating really does matter. But here it is anyway, without the indentations:

Epistle To Be Left In The Earth

by Archibald MacLeish

...It is colder now,
there are many stars,
we are drifting
North by the Great Bear,
the leaves are falling
The water is stone in the scooped rocks,
to southward
Red sun grey air:
the crows are
Slow on their crooked wings,
the jays have left us:
Long since we passed the flares of Orion.
Each man believes in his heart he will die.
Many have written last thoughts and last letters.
None know if our deaths are now or forever:
None know if this wandering earth will be found.

We lie down and the snow covers our garments.
I pray you,
you (if any open this writing)
Make in your mouths the words that were our names.
I will tell you all we have learned,
I will tell you everything:
The earth is round,
there are springs under the orchards,
The loam cuts with a blunt knife,
beware of
Elms in thunder,
the lights in the sky are stars --
We think they do not see,
we think also
The trees do not know nor the leaves of the grasses hear us:
The birds too are ignorant.
Do not listen.
Do not stand at dark in the open windows.
We before you have heard this:
they are voices:
They are not words at all but the wind rising.
Also none among us has seen God
(... We have thought often
the flaws of sun in the late and driving weather
pointed to one tree but it was not so.)
As for the nights I warn you the nights are dangerous:
The wind changes at night and the dreams come.

It is very cold,
there are strange stars near Arcturus,

Voices are crying an unknown name in the sky

And as usual I am left wondering what the dreams and voices out there are, and I tell myself that Macleish is offering a bit of hope at the end of his narrator's denial of anything Beyond.

And as usual I wonder if "we are drifting" nowhere in particular, or if "we are drifting north by the Great Bear" and if it makes a difference. Probably the former, but the later is how I read it first, and it stuck.

NB: I present the poem as punctuated and laid out (well actually I am still working on this part, grrrr. 10 minutes later-- I am giving up--HOW DOES ONE GET BLOGGER TO ACCEPT THE FACT THAT ONE REALLY WANTS SPACES EVERYTIME ONE TYPES THE SPACE BAR???? Is there html code for this?) in The New Oxford Book of American Verse --there really is no final period. Which I think makes a difference...

Poetry Friday is being hosted at Susan Writes today--thanks Susan!

Kiss & Blog

Kiss & Blog, by Alyson Noel (2007, 227 pp), is a good read--good entertainment, with a smidge of thought-provoking-ness. The entertainment comes from the brisk first person present narrative of Winter--would-be member of the alpha girl clique at the beginning of her sophomore year, older and wiser at the end of the book. The thought-provoking-ness comes from the important messages that the really cool people aren't necessarily the ones at Table One, and that it's not so great a thing to rat on your ex-best friend all over the internet.

Winter and Sloane start their sophomore year having studied the ways of the beautiful girls intensely all summer--but whereas Sloane leaps right into the peppy smily-ness of it all, Winter can't embrace the de rigour cuteness/hyena grinning hypocrisy necessary to succeed at this paricular school, and is left behind in unpopularity. Hurt by Sloane's cruel rejection of her, Winter starts to blog about the dark (well, not all that dark) and sometimes gross past of "Princess Pink," --things that only a best friend would know, and that friends are never supposed to tell. Especially not on a blog that everyone at school starts reading...(a tad unbelievable, but a necessary plot device).

Along the way, Winter makes friends much more interesting than Sloane's new group, ventures into the realm of relationships (nothing too racy), gets drunk for the first time (and gets horribly sick, and decides it's not for her), and becomes a more interesting, wiser person herself.

Alyson Noel is the author of four other books for young adults, including Saving Zoe, which I am in the middle of right now...Both Kiss & Blog and Saving Zoe have been nominated for the YA Cybils awards, and the publisher (St. Martin's Griffin) very kindly sent all of us on the committee copies to review. And today is the last day to submit your recommendations, so go! now!

(spoiler) Sloane is left totally un-redeemed, which was too bad--but in real life, people don't suddenly see the light in the last pages of a book, so one can't really expect it of fictional people). It did leave me feeling that she was a straw man, however--so much a caricature of snotty A list girl that it weakened the book as a whole. But there's lots of room for a sequel here, and I am quite prepared to believe that Noel has the writerly skills necessary to pull a person out of Sloane if she so desires...

Another problem I have with this book is that some of the the things that Winter posts about Sloane are really rotten--I'm thinking of her post about Sloane's father. The consequences of posting things like this are a a hugly important issue, but this isn't dealt with meaningfully here.

Ballet Shoes on television -- 1975 and 2007

The new Ballet Shoes television movie is due out in the UK around Christmas...lord knows when it will be shown over here. And what's with the high billing of Sir Donald Houghton (played by Peter Boyles) in the cast list? A very minor minor part in the book, but perhaps he has been transformed into a Love Interest for Sylvia? Pauline? Nana?

In the meantime, the 1975 BBC television version of Ballet Shoes has been posted on You Tube --here is a link that should take you to all the episodes in order (thanks, Emma, if you ever read this!). My first copy had a picture of Posy from this series, and I've always been curious about the show (and peeved that her hair didn't seem to be read), so I shall be checking it out with interest.

Adults across the pond revisiting children's books

Here's a link to a bbc article about adults re-reading children's books, and the boom in nostalgia publishing. It touches on the tricky issue of bringing to children's attention books that embody racist or otherwise hurtful ideas that (one hopes) are not going to be with us forever. I'm a bit wishy washy on this one--as a social historian, cleansing the past (by re-writing books) is a repellent idea, but as a mother, reading out loud to my own kids, I do often alter the text so as to make it less racist, sexist, or just more inclusive...oh well. Doubtless there will still be plenty of really repellent stuff for them to read when they are ready to leave the family sofa. But I'm not going to buy them Tintin in the Congo.

Robert's Snow-- Time to bid!

Yesterday was the last day of snowflake blogging--the links to last week's snowflakes are still up on the right. Hundreds of snowflakes, created by children's illustrators will be auctioned off to benefit cancer research, and most of these have been featured at various blogs in the past few weeks. For me it has been a wonderful introduction to illustrators whose work just blows me away, and it has also been great to visit new blogs.

And I hope that it encourages people to go off and bid on the little darlings! The first auction begins today (November, 19), here!

A big big Thank You to Jules, of Seven Impossible Things, the mastermind behind the mass blog-flaking, for her tremendous vision, patience, and organizational wonderful-ness!

Dramarama, by E. Lockhart

I am a huge fan of English author Noel Streatfeild (Ballet Shoes and the like)--stories of kids going on stage, with struggles, vivid descriptions of the theatre, and ultimate triumph. In fact, I'm a sucker for books about kids pursuing careers in the performing arts in general (although Helen Doyle Boylston's Sue Barton books about nursing are much better than her theatre series about Carol). So once I realized that Dramarama, by E. Lockhart, was going to take me off to a summer theater camp crammed with incredibly talented teens, I was very hopeful. From the first pages I enjoyed the voices of the narrator (Sarah aka Saydee) and her best buddy (Demi) immensely, so I just sat back happily to enjoy the show.

Saydee and Demi are best friends, one girl, one guy, one straight, one gay, one white, one black (making Demi the only black gay guy I've encountered this year in my YA reading, but in Lockhart's skilled hands he is far more than the sum of these labels). Both are panting to escape boring Ohio for the razzle-dazzle of the theatre, with the Wildewood Summer Institute their first stop.

Dramarama did not disappoint. Lockhart does a great job balancing her descriptions of the theatre aspects of the story with character development and interpersonal relationships. Sayde's ups and downs with her performances and her friendships are neither so up as to be unrealistic nor so down as to depress sensitive readers such as myself. I had a great time reading this book, and briefly toyed with the idea of running of to go on stage myself...although I really don't want to move to New York...

E. Lockhart is also the author of several other books, none of which I have read. Yet. Here's her website.

Dramarama has been nominated for the YA Cybils award--thanks to the publisher, Hyperion, for sending us review copies! And if you haven't nominated your favorite books of the year for the Cybils, head on over and do so!

Here's another review, over at Interactive Reader.

Remembering Raquel, by Vivian Vande Velde

Remembering Raquel, by Vivian Vande Velde (Harcourt Children's Books, November 2007, 160 pp).

When this book opens, 14 year old Raquel Falcone has changed from a metaphorically empty space in her freshman classroom to a literal one -- she has been killed in a traffic accident. How did she die, people wonder; was it really an accident? How did she live? In short, first person vignettes, the people around her react, reflect, and remember—and as they do, the shape of Raquel emerges, and she becomes in the reader’s mind a person worth knowing, and worth caring about (although not all the people who remember her did care much). The moments of Raquel’s sudden death, also an empty space at the beginning of the book, get filled in along with her life—the reader must take the one with the other.

This is a fast read, and it is told by a wide variety of well-characterized narrators, some very sympathetic, others less so. I think that because it is written in such a un-narrativly dense style (which I can’t think of a way right now to say more gracefully, but it isn’t a criticism), this might be a book to give to younger teens who aren’t the keenest of readers. The central question—how would one be remembered, oneself?—has a universal applicability that might also draw in reluctant readers. But this isn’t to say that this is an easy or superficial book. It is not; it is very moving, thought-provoking, and graceful in its creation of Raquel’s life and death.

And it ends on the hopeful note of a new friendship arising from a meeting at her funeral, which would probably have pleased Raquel.

This book has been nominated in the YA category of the Cybils Awards. The publisher sent copies to all of us on the Nominating Committee--thanks.

Happy 100th birthday, Astrid Lindgren!

Today (November 14) would have been the 100th birthday of the famous Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren. She's best known for her Pippi Longstocking series, which have just gotten a new illustrator (see Cheryl Rainfield's blog and A Year of Reading), but other books of hers are well worth reading. The Brothers Lionheart, for instance, is a fantastical quest story that was a favorite of several of my college friends.

After her death, a very strange memorial was constructed near her home in Vimmerby. It had originally been intended for the city center, but the townsfolk objected--with reason, because it is rather disturbing. The main part of it consists of a decapitated child's head at the corner of a water feature of twisted metal:



Here's a brief list of some of her better known books:

The Pippi Longstocking series (Pippi Långstrump)
Karlsson-on-the-Roof series (Karlsson på taket)
Emil of Maple Hills (Emil i Lönneberga)
The Bill Bergson series (Mästerdetektiven Blomkvist)
Madicken
Ronia the Robber's Daughter (Ronja rövardotter)
Seacrow Island (Tjorven på Saltkråkan)
The Six Bullerby Children / The Children of Noisy Village (Barnen i Bullerbyn)
Mio, my Mio (also known as Mio, my Son) (Mio, min Mio)
The Brothers Lionheart (Bröderna Lejonhjärta)

Reading Cinderella to my boys--Glass Slipper, Golden Sandal

After being struck dumb by Julie Paschkis' snowflake over at the Excelsior File, I couldn't say no when one of the books she illustrated caught my eye at the library. Glass Slipper, Golden Sandal, by Paul Fleishman, illustrated by Julie Paschkis (2007, 32 pp), is subtitled "A Worldwide Cinderella" which sums it up nicely (and, for parents who like books to multi-task, it promises geographical as well as literary benefit for the Young)--basically, it is bits of Cinderella stories from around the world, joined together in a single narrative: the cow "poured honey for her from its horn...and a fairy gave her figs and apricots...and Godfather Snake gave her rice." Each place has its own beautiful illustrations, which are a cross-cultural education in themselves.

"Here, boys," I said when I got home from the library. "Come read with me."

"Read what?" they asked, suspiciously.

"This book about Cinderella!"

Their jaws dropped. "Cinderella???" they whined. Unspoken, the words "disney" "princess" and "pink" hung in the air.

"Yes," I said, "Come here."

Miraculously, they came, and we read the book. And they loved it, and I loved it, and it was indeed both a literary and a geographical trip. Because the story moves from place to place, tale to tale, culture to culture, making no attempt to explain or apologize for discongruities, it has a surreality to it that makes it freshly magical to people like me (who have in fact seen Disney's Cinderella) and makes it enchanting for people like my boys (who haven't). They have asked to have it read repeatedly (and what higher praise is there), and they think it would be a nice Christmas present for their girl cousin. And, of course, her little brother.

So now the ice is broken, and I shall try reading them other princess stories...

Borderline, by Bonnie Rozanski

Borderline by Bonnie Rozanski (2007, Young Adult, 224 pages).

A mother of young children (which is what I am) is not the target audience for Borderline. The book starts with a parent's worst nightmare-- a sweet, charming baby boy, falling away into autism; the mother becoming so caught up in trying to bring him back that she has little to give to her older son. That older son is Guy, the narrator of this story-- now an adolescent, struggling in school, struggling to keep going with little support from his family, but with a good friend, Matt, and a wolf he befriends in his father's lab. The younger son is Austin, now five, inarticulate and unresponsive.

The wolf is part of a study that Guy's father is working on exploring the evolution of domesticity--how many generations of breeding the most dog-like wolves must pass before you end up with a dog. Wolf is not doing well on the "being a dog" tests, and in the climax of the book, Guy, Wolf, Matt and Austin (the only one able to open Wolf's cage), head out into the woods before Wolf, deemed a failed experiment, is euthanized.

Within this plot, Borderline explores the complex relationship between development and environment. Guy's mother is obsessed with figuring out what caused Austin's autism, his father is obsessed with his work on the wolves . And Matt is also struggling with a toxic environment--in his case, a life centered around fast food, that is killing his overweight father and putting him at risk too. At times, the issues get a bit in the way of the story--at the funeral of his father, for instance, Matt stands up to deliver a diatribe against fast food that seems a tad over the top. But these issues are real, and Bonnie Rozanski's knowledgeable exploration of them adds a thought-provoking dimension to the book.

(I received a review copy of this book from its publisher, Porcipine's Quill).

Robert's Snow: Snowasaurus

Here is Snowasaurus -- I think this is the only snowflake with a dinosaur on it! It comes from the brush of James Gurney, the creator of Dinotopia. The first two books Dinotopia: A Land Apart From Time and Dinotopia: The World Beneath



have been joined by new book in the Dinotopia series, Journey to Chandara (just released in October).


Mr. Gurney has an absolutly fascinating blog , full of instructive detail about the painting process. Here is my favorite post, which describes the four stages of the architecture painting process (I wish I had his way with styrofoam. Maybe he has a stronger kind of glue than the Elmers we use). Here is the magnificant end result:


Here at the Dinotopia website, you can find lots of information about the creative process behind the books. I was interested to learn that Mr. Gurney was an archaeology major, which does not surprise me given the loving attention to material detail in his paintings.

James Gurney is currently on tour, promoting his new book--here are some upcoming appearances, with more details to be found via his blog:

Nov 7 Three Rivers, MI
Nov 9 & 10 Mentor, OH
Nov. 12 SUNY Fredonia
Nov 13 RIT, Rochester NY
Nov 14, Syracuse, NY
Nov 14 PM Albany, NY
Nov. 15 WAMC Radio

Going back to High School

I spent part of my day in high school, talking to several large groups of kids about the Revolutionary War, shipwrecks, etc. But I didn't want to talk. Instead, inspired by all the YA books I've been reading recently for the Cybils Awards, I wanted stare at them and ask them questions. Like--"So, which of you are the Mean Girls?" I looked for nerds, but couldn't easily find them. Are they getting better at blending? Is this school just one big happy collective? Or am I so out of it that I can't recognize them anymore...

What I've been doing today--the British raid Prudence Island (January 12, 1776)

A few months ago, it seemed like a great idea to give a talk about Rhode Island in the Revolutionary War (from an archaeological perspective) to a local high school. Now that it's tomorrow, it seems like a rather less great idea.

However, I am going to show the students my favorite historical drawing of all time:
This is a sketch by the Rev. Ezra Stiles (President of Yale from 1778-1795) who was a phenomenal recorder of information.* It shows the British Marines (the little stick figures marching from the boats) invading Prudence Island, in Narragansett Bay, meeting resistance from the Sons of Liberty. The sidebar says: "Here one left killed" "Here one taken wounded" and "Houses burnt. 8." The only house on the island not burned belonged to Thomas Allin and his family. His wife and seven of their eleven children were blind, and the British commander took pity on them and spared their home. The family moved west after the war, and all that is left of the Blind Allin house is its collapsing cellar hole, surrounded by brambles.

That is just one of the many thrilling stories of Rhode Island in the Revolution that I hope will keep my audience interested. I am also going to bring a few cannon balls with me. Nothing breaks the ice like a cannon ball.

*from Abbass, D.K. 2006 Rhode Island in the Revolution: Big Happenings in the Smallest Colony. The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project, Newport.

The Boy with Two Belly Buttons, by Stephen Dubner

The Boy with Two Belly Buttons, by Stephen J. Dubner, illustrated by Christoph Niemann (2007, 32 pp, ages 4-8), is, surprise surprise, a picture book about a boy with two belly buttons. Solomon doesn't realize he has an extraordinary tummy until his baby sister arrives on the scene, and she only has one! And his parents, busy coping with the crying baby, aren't able to talk to him much about it. So off he goes on a quest for information-- to the hospital, the swimming pool, and the local college- and only ends up feeling stranger than ever. Then a chance encounter with a famous movie director, who is excited by Solomon's uniqueness, makes him feel that being different is not so bad after all (which ties in nicely with a lot of the YA books I've been reading recently). This is (surprise surprise) the Message of the book, but it's not delivered in too much of an in-your-face way, so any cynical adults reading the book should be able to cope. I was. This is a fine story, with fine illustrations, and my boys enjoyed it. But what they enjoyed most was when we all studied our own belly buttons after reading it...

And what I liked best about this book is that it falls into the valuable category of "books a seven year old who is not an especially skilled reader might enjoy reading out loud to his four year old brother." This, at the moment, is my favorite type of book.

(I got this book as a review copy from HarperCollins).

dismay, and a warning, and finally, an answer

The first paper I ever wrote in college was returned to me with the following comment: "There are so many typographical errors that it is difficult to assess the severity of your spelling disorder." It was entitled "The Influance (sic) of Saturn on Events in the Knight's Tale." Spell check helps some, of course, but not for everything, as readers of this blog on Jacket Flap will have found out.

For I have just realized, to my utter horror, that the first version of a post one posts stays on Jacket Flap even if one revises it and corrects the horrible infelicities of language and the utterly mortifying spelling/punctuation errors that are blindingly apparent to the meanest intelligence so why didn't one see them the first time. So my post on Red Glass, as it appears on my home blog, is a much, much nicer thing than the Jacket Flap version, and I am sad about it.

BUT, Tracy the Goddess of Jacket Flap came to my aid, and told me that if I just deleted the post, Jacket Flap would pick up the new version the next time it did its Sweep of Blogs. So all is well. Thank you Tracy!

Red Glass, by Laura Resau

Red Glass, by Laura Resau (2007, 288pp)

Sophie drives an hour south from her home to sit alone in the desert, where she thinks of her life as an amoeba -- a nobody, sickly and pale. 5 year old Pablo was in the desert alone too, found there by the boarder patrol after his parents died of thirst. "We will take him," says Sophie's aunt, herself an immigrant from Bosnia. Now, living with Sophie's family, he will barely speak. Waiting for Pablo to unclench himself, Sophie hopes that she too can somehow find an identity.

A year passes--Pablo sleeps outside, next to the chickens, Sophie reads to him from The Little Prince. Then one day, a chicken lays its first egg, and Pablo, so proud and happy about it, is able to tell who he is. Now that he has a name and a place again, he must go back to his family in Mexico- for a visit, hopes Sophie, who does not want to lose him. So Sophie and her aunt set off to take Pablo over the boarder, sharing a van with teenaged Angel and his father, off on a quest of their own. They are on their way to Guatemala, which they had fled in fear for their lives about 10 years before. They are looking for the wife and mother they lost, and the jewels she buried.

Leaving Sophia, her aunt, and Pablo in Mexico, Angel and his father continue south. But disaster strikes them. Sophie must set out on her own, following Angel and his father into Guatemala. She must leave Sophie the sickly amoeba behind, and become, as she tells herself, Sophie la Fuerte, the strong and brave. She must find her beloved and bring him safely home. Which she does, and I won't say anything more about her journey and what Angel finds on his own quest because I don't want to spoil it, but it is nerve racking and rings absolutely true. I'm not going to say what happens to Pablo either, but this storyline is also treated in a tenderly realistic way.

I've been reading a lot of YA recently--lots of books set in and around high schools. Red Glass is a different sort of book--it is an Epic Journey, into wonderful, scary new places (very well described), where ghosts from the past and present dangers must be confronted (don't leave the path to see the beautiful flowers more closely, warns one character. There are land mines).

Personal Note:

Picking up this book again to refresh my memory before writing this, I found myself reading it all over again. And poo to anyone who says blog reviewers don't think deeply about the books they read. I seem to have been thinking so deeply about Red Glass that I dreamt last night that it had been made into a movie, and I grew quite agitated as they veered from the story as written.

Here are some specific things I liked lots:
--I am a great believer in learning through fiction reading. This is a great book for providing information and provoking thought about immigration, Mexico, and Guatemala.
--The fact that some people speak Spanish and English interchangeably is treated matter of factly, with enough actual Spanish thrown in to make the reader aware of it without being overwhelming.
--I liked Sophie's introspection, and I liked the budding romance between her and Angel, which was tender and suitable for all ages.
--I liked that Sophie had a stable, loving family life in which conflict with parents was not an issue.

Here's Laura Resau's website, which is well worth visiting!

This Week's Edition of Fun with Metaphors

The piece of red glass that gives this book its title was brought to American by Sophie's aunt, who held tightly to it while a prisoner of war in Bosnia. It is metaphor for many of the themes of the book -- it is the color of blood, with a sharp edge--a weapon, a treasure that gave a trapped mind strength, an echo of the buried jewels of Angel's lost mother. And I like to think that it's a metaphor for a window into the past, with the glass colored by memories of violence and loss. At the book's end, when peace has been made with the dead, there is a celebration of bright colors and new beginnings. Sophie wears a white sundress she bought on impulse in Pablo's home village, with metaphorical implications of its own...

Which leads to another thing I really like about this book--it pays re-reading. The second time through I found myself finding still more images and metaphors to ponder. And I liked the characters as people so much that it was a pleasure to spend more time with them.

Red Glass has been nominated for the YA Cybils award.

Blood Brothers

Blood Brothers, by S.A. Harazin, is one heck of a page-turner. The "brothers" are Joey, a guy with everything--money, family, friends, off to Duke in the fall, and Clay, who has so little he can't imagine a happy ending for himself. The closest he comes is planning a cross country bike trip with Joey. Joey is one thing that's keeping Clay's life together; the other is his job at the local hospital, where he has found adult support and approval. Then one day, in the summer after the two boys graduate from high school, Clay heads over to Joey's house, and his friend and his job and his one dream are thrown into jeopardy.

Joey, the golden boy who doesn't do bad things, is off his head. Violent. Hallucinating. And then, after Clay pushes him hard in self defense, he's on life support at the hospital where Clay works. What happened to Joey is a mystery Clay must solve.

Blood Brothers is told in the first person present, with flashbacks to the boys' shared past. It moves quickly back and forth, and there always seems to be something happening, which gives the book a snappy feeling. This may add to its appeal to teen readers (and, perhaps going out a limb here, boy teen readers in particular), and it certainly kept my attention focused. But it's a trade off--in a book like this, where the action moves at a rapid pace from scene to scene, past to present, the reader and the narrator have little time to reflect, appreciate, empathize.

The first person present is not the easiest voice in which to tell about secondary characters- some in this book didn't convince me at all (especially Clay's father). One memorable exception is the local sheriff--the description of the dusty pictures of long-gone foster children in his living room made him suddenly real to me. Much of this book is set in the hospital where Clay works, and here the first person present combined with Harazin's personal knowledge of nursing made for compelling reading.*

For more about this book and its author, here's a link to an interview with S.A. Harazin at the YA Authors Cafe.

ps: This book comes with the added benefit of an anti-drug message that is powerful without being didactic!


*I know that book reviewers shouldn't whine because the author didn't write the book the reviewer wanted to read, so this isn't a whine. But-- if S.A. Harazin were ever to decide to write more books about high school kids considering careers in the medical profession, or books set in hospitals, I'd read them in a shot! Where is the Sue Barton, Student Nurse, for today's teen readers? I mean this, and am now rifling through my head trying to thing of contemporary YA "career" stories and failing.