The Green Book, aka Shine, by Jill Paton Walsh

A long time ago, I read a request on a teacher's blog for recommendations of science fiction stories for the younger reader (which I just tried finding again, to no avail...). I didn't have anything to add at the time that hadn't already been mentioned, but I do now--The Green Book, later reissued as Shine, by Jill Paton Walsh, illustrated with pencil drawings by Lloyd Bloom (1981/1988, 74 pp, 8 year olds and up). If Ursula Le Guin were to write a science fiction story for young readers, it might be something like this, and since I think Le Guin is brilliant, this is high praise.


The book begins thus: "Father said, "We can take very little with us." Only one book each.

Father, Joe, Sarah, and Pattie, and lots of other families, are leaving a dying earth on one of the last escape ships. They are headed for a far planet that they know almost nothing about, hoping it can sustain human life. Pattie is so young that she will not be able to remember the Earth. But being the youngest, she gets to name the new planet--"Shine," she calls it, a planet where all the plant life sparkles like glass.

How will they build with mineral laden wood they cannot saw? How will they survive, when their rabbits die from eating the glassy grass, and their wheat shines like diamonds? How will they build a community--what will be valued, and why? And then, when they meet other living beings, how will they co-exist?

One step they take in building a life together is to share their books. Joe's copy of Robinson Crusoe is not in great demand (there are multiple copies), nor is Sarah's copy of The Pony Club Rides Again. Many people would have swapped things for a chance to read Father's technology book, but he won't let it out of his sight--he clings to it as his passport toward becoming the new elite of their community. But it is Pattie's book, the "green book" of the title, that becomes the most important. Its pages are blank, and her older siblings had mocked her choice. But in the end, this is the book that will tell the new story the colonists are creating. It is no longer empty, but "full of writing, very large and round and shaky."

And Father started to read to the people of Shine. He turned "back and back in the green book to the very first page, and began to read: "Father said we could take very little with us..."

I find new planet exploration questions like this extremely interesting, and Walsh does a great job with them. In her 74 pages, Walsh makes every word count. It's very easy to imagine kids that haven't thought of these things before reading this book with wide eyes and engaged minds, and imagining and daydreaming after it over.

A more detailed post about Shine can be found here at the Inter-Galactic Playground (a very interesting blog whose author, sadly, seems to have decided to more or less give up on it).

Jill Paton Walsh has written some great books for kids-- particularly A Parcel of Patterns (1984) and A Chance Child (1978). More recently she has turned to writing continuations of Dorothy Sayer's Lord Peter series.

Charlotte Sometimes for Timeslip Tuesday

Welcome to Timeslip Tuesday. If you have a review of a Timeslip story you'd like to share, or anything else timeslip bookish, please leave me a link!

Today's Timeslip Tuesday book is the one that I consider such a Classic Example of the genre that I used it for my T.T. graphic (although with a different cover from the most recent edition at left)-- Charlotte Sometimes, by Penelope Farmer (1969, reprinted many times, a good one for ages 9-12 ish). I am not alone in thinking this- the book shows up in just about all the critical essays on timeslip stories I've read (2), and even when it first came out its quality was recognized--in a review written that year, Margery Fisher described Charlotte Sometimes as "…a haunting, convincing story which comes close to being a masterpiece of its kind." (Growing Point, November 1969, p 1408).

In 1918, with WW I still being fought, Clare Moby and her little sister Emily go to boarding school for the first time. Forty years later, a girl named Charlotte Makepeace arrives at the same school, and sleeps in the same bed that Clare had used. Charlotte awakes after her first night to find herself in Claire's time, and so begins a dizzying flip flop through time as the two girls alternate days in each other's life. No one, except Emily, realizes they are two different girls, although all the frantic piano practicing Charlotte does is not enough to keep the music teacher from being baffled by her erratic performance. They communicate through Clare's journal, hidden in her time, and both are certain that the strange experience will end when Clare and Emily become day girls.

"Dear Charlotte, [wrote Clare]
Did Emily tell you about the bed? I think she might be right, though I did not tell her so. We should be moving to lodgings now quite soon. We must make quite sure I am in 1918, not you, the day we move. Emily would be so worried if you got caught then, and I in your time, and I would be so worried about her
Yours sincerely,
Clare"

But it is not Clare who is in 1918 when the girls are moved, but Charlotte. And away from the bed, the time travelling won't happen, and Charlotte begins to worry that she will be Clare forever, that she has replaced Emily for Emma, her own little sister, and most frighteningly of all, that she might be in danger of slipping even further back in time....

Charlotte Sometimes is unusual plot-wise. It is rare for two people to actually swap places in time, and to be able to communicate. This premise makes this a great book about identity--if people don't know you're not you, what constitutes "you" to begin with? The same reviewer I quoted above wrote, "…this is really a study in disintegration, the study of a girl finding an identity by losing it… ". Lots of characters going back in time wonder if they are losing their real self, but Charlotte actually has a "self" that she has to be in the past, one that comes with the emotional attachment of a little sister. She constantly struggles to hold onto bits of Charlotte that aren't Clare, but it is hard.

What makes this book a favorite of mine, however, is its exploration of what it means to be a sister (something in which I have a natural interest, being a middle sister myself). Emily both accepts and rejects Charlotte as a sister. She generally adopts a "one bossy sister is the same as another" point of view, with a strong sense that Charlotte should be there looking after her--

"Tears marked her face but she stopped crying the moment she saw Charlotte; became more indignant than frightened.

"Why ever did you let me go like that?" she asked. "I thought I'd never find you."

Yet Emily feels deep anguish, crying bitterly, when she thinks she hears Clare's voice, but finds Charlotte is still in her sister's place. And Charlotte, in her turn, worries that she is letting Emily take Emma's place in her own heart. Haunting and convincing, indeed.

Disclaimer: I am perhaps disposed to find this book interesting because I, of course, am a Charlotte, and my own little sister is an Emily. But lots of other people who aren't named Charlotte have liked it, so I feel free to recommend it with a clean conscience! There is also the added bonus of a quite detailed WW I background, and a bit of back story for the secondary charaters, both of which added interest for me.

Penelope Farmer wrote two earlier books about Charlotte and her own sister, Emma, which are very strange indeed (The Summer Birds and Emma in Winter, both of which involve flying by magic). So strange are these books that I find it easier to pretend that they are written about two altogether different people--this is not to say that they are bad, just really odd. And then there is the still stranger Castle of Bone...

p.s. This might also be the only timeslip story to have inspired a rock song (Charlotte Sometimes, by the Cure). There is also a relatively new arrival on the rock music scene calling herself Charlotte Sometimes, which kinda seems lame to me. Or is it really neat that she has picked up on the struggle for identity embedded in this book and made it her own?????

McKinley talking about McKillip

I am an ardent fan of Robin McKinely and Patricia McKillip, so it was a great treat today to read on Robin's blog her thoughts on Patricia's forthcoming book, The Bell at Sealey Head.

(and if anyone wonders where Timeslip Tuesday is, it's coming. It just slipped a bit, timewise).

Reader's block and re-reading

Over at the Guardian book blog yesterday, there was an article about what writers do when they fall victim to the dreaded Reader's Block, that sad state of mind when you can't really think of anything you want to read (described in this earlier article).

My favorite answer was from novelist Joanne Harris, who's solution is "Re-reading an old favourite often works, particularly books you read as a child. I just re-read the first five Lorna Hill Sadler's Wells series, all bought in 1950s first editions, which gets me back to the primal enjoyment of reading."

That's my kind of answer! When I feel vaguely queasy at the thought of reading something new, I too re-read the tired and true. I feel inspired to re-read my Lorna Hills now, but I lent them a while ago to someone I hardly know, and I'm a little anxious about them....(the Wells series to which Harris refers is about girls training to be ballet dancers at Sadlers Wells, by the way. Hill wrote many other book as well, and here's more information about her and her books. The first comment I ever left for Little Willow was a recommedation of Hill's ballet books...but sadly they are the sort of thing you have to order from the UK).

A while ago I wondered if girls re-read for comfort more than boys. Now I am wondering if introverts re-read more than extroverts. The former feel most at ease in the company of old and dear friends, that later seek out the new and exciting, and want to make new friends...

Girls in books who write poetry, plus One Art, by Elizabeth Bishop

So here's a quote from a Newsweek article about Anne of Green Gables that's been on quite few blogs recently: "The literary smart girl is still showing up in literature, but she's often the sidekick," says Trinna Frever, an "Anne of Green Gables" scholar. "It is a reflection of a culture that's placing less value on intelligence, and also treating intelligence as a stigmatized quality."

I started thinking since last December about heirs to Anne, after reading Undercover, by Beth Kephart (Harper Teen,2007). This book, which was nominated for the YA Cybils awards, is about Elisa, a very engaging "literary smart girl" who writes poetry, falls in love, gets depressed about her family situation, ice skates alone on a frozen pond at night, has a great English teacher, and keeps a notebook of words. It's a lovely book--I just re-read it more peacefully than I had a chance to last fall (what with the other 120-ish ya books to read for the Cybils*), and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes metaphors, words qua words, and books about teenage girls.

I have been meaning to write about Undercover for Poetry Friday since reading it seven months ago, but I wanted to try to find other books about girls writing poetry, to provide context. It is easy to find lots of smart, sassy girls, but harder to find the girls who love words and writing, the same way that Anne, and her literary sister, Emily (the girl featured in LM Montgomery's other series) do. The only slightly modern one I can think of is Julia, in A Room Made of Windows, by Elinor Cameron (1971)(a fine book that, if you've never read it). But are there no other examples of fictional girls writing poetry from the mid 20th century on? I'll be the first to admit that I'm probably missing other obvious ones, but it is a hard thing to google.

Elisa's own poetry, examples of which are given in Undercover, are very good for a young writer. But the poem I like best in the book is one the English teacher makes her students read:

One Art, by Elizabeth Bishop (from Geography III, 1977)

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

I remember my English teacher in high school giving us Geography III to read (pretty avant garde of him to do so in 1983), and how my adolescent self found deep dark resonance in her words...I want to go back, and re-visit her again. And viz Undercover-isn't that a nice thing, when a book you like leads you to a poem you like, and inspires you to go read more?

And if anyone can think of other books about girls writing poetry, let me know!

* just wanted to say thank to Harper Teen, and all the other publishers who sent books for us Cybils committee people to read. Out of all the books I was sent, Undercover was one of just a handful I kept for myself, knowing that I'd want to re-read it...the rest found a good home at the library.

Link to Publishers Weekly reivew of Chalice

Chalice, Robin McKinley's forthcoming book, was just reviewed in Publishers Weekly. Here's a quote:

Mirasol and the new Master are drawn to each other, even though she suspects their union is prohibited, and their smoldering attraction—plus the gorgeously evoked magic and the escalating threat that Willowlands will be usurped—gives this tale its sizzle. In the best McKinley fashion, the fantasy realm is evoked in thorough and telling detail, with the energy of the narrative lending excitement to descriptions of even the most stylized rituals. A lavish and lasting treat.

And here's the link to the whole thing--just scroll through the picture books.

bookshelves

Isn't that pretty? Saw two coffee tables in half, and voila. I found it here, at a blog all about bookshelves...

The Black Canary for Timeslip Tuesday

This week's book for Timeslip Tuesday is The Black Canary, by Jane Louise Curry (2005, McElderry Books, 279pp, for middle grade readers). As usual, if you have a timeslip review of your own, from today or from years ago, please leave me a link and I'll add it to the post!

12 year old James had hoped for a pleasant summer at home in the states with his parents, a summer where music wasn't going to be front and center, the way it generally was. With his parents and his grandparents on both the black side of the family and the white all musicians, James is sick of the whole music thing, and wants to find an identity of his own.

But instead, James finds himself spending the summer in an apartment in London, while his mother is on tour. Where he did not want to be at all, and with music, once again, the focus of his parents' interests.

Woken the first night there by the sound of water running, James follows the sound down to the basement, where he discovers a shimmering lens of light--a portal back in time, to England in 1600. His journeys into the past become gradually longer, until after one trip he discovers, to his horror, that he has returned to the past of the present he left--his family hasn't gotten to London yet. So he passes through the portal again, hoping things will come out better, but this time, he can't find his way back. He is lost in Elizabethan England, where is he is pressed into the service of the Queen as one of her entertainers, the Children of the Chapel Royal.

The musical talents he had tried to avoid in his present make him a precious find to the masters of the Children. It is not just his singing voice that impresses--his dark skin makes him an exotic attraction, and he is dubbed "the Black Canary." Engrossed in the fascinating world of drama both on stage and in the intrigues of Elizabethan politics, James struggles to remember who he really is, and struggles as well with the fact that he really does love music.

It was rather refreshing to read a book featuring Elizabethan drama that does not mention Will Shakespeare--instead, we have Ben Jonson. Almost all of Curry's named character's are real people, and her knowledge of Elizabethan drama is evident. James' education as an Elizabethan musician are described in engrossing detail, although the engrossing part might be debatable. I happen to like books in which people start new schools and have to learn Latin so as to catch up with the other kids-- timeslipping provides the ultimate experience of new school anxiety. And I enjoy reading about people learning music, which we get a good bit of here.

I also found it interesting to read about a biracial boy travelling to an all white past*--although there were some Africans in Elizabethan England, they were few and far between.

"James was fascinated by everything, and at the same time uneasy. He wasn't sure why. He tried to think, but in that hubbub it was a while before he realized what he was seeing. At home, at least anywhere he went, he had never been in a next-to-all-white world, or even an all-white crowd, though a few Boston concert audiences had come close. Here he didn't see a face that wasn't white..." (pp 99-100).

"Edited to add seven years later--I am now thinking that this is problematic, and that Elizabethan England was much less monochrome than received wisdom would have us believe.   I also have doubts about James not having been much in all white, or near all white, spaces. There are still so many of these up in New England...."

James, trying to make sense of where he has found himself, is, in general, a sympathetically reflective character. I think timeslip stories must be a bit tricky to write in this regard. You wouldn't want your character just happily going with the flow--here I am in a different time la la la--but neither would you want to spend pages on worry, fear, will I ever get home, etc. I think Curry does rather well, in fact, better than most, with striking a balance of growing acceptance and constant anxiety. With his new life becoming increasingly engrossing, James grows "frightened that already the future where he belonged was slipping away...." (p 206). Will he stay to preform before the queen, or take the chance to escape from his masters and go home...

One minor note of complaint: the cover appears to show a sepia photograph of early twentieth century London. What's with this? There is no way you would know it was about Elizabethan England. It also features the common "truncated child" motif. Not to go too deeply into this, but the fact that the title covers James' mouth is probably deliberate and metaphorical as all get out.


*Incidentally, the first of my Timeslip Tuesday books, Don't Know Where, Don't Know When, also featured a black boy travelling back to the very white England of the first half of the 20th century. If I can find one more example, I'll have a Theme...

Little Skink's Tail, by Janet Halfmann

I have always been partial to skinks. Partly it's because I think "skink" is fun to say, especially if you say "skeeenk." Partly it's because there are skinks at my parents' house, so they remind me of my happy childhood (and reasonably happy young adulthood, and happy trips down there with my own kids). Little Skink's Tail, by Janet Halfmann, illustrated by Laurie Allen Klein (2007, Sylvan Dell Publishing), is the cutest skink picture book I have ever read (it is also the only skink book I've ever read, but still it's darn cute).

It begins in a fairly typical "picture book about wild animal" style--the little skink is basking on a rock, ready to start her day. Then--Danger! A hungry crow swoops down! Will little skink be the crow's breakfast? No! Thanks to her detachable tail, which goes "wriggling wildly through the fallen leaves," little skink is safe. But now she is tail-less, and she misses her pretty blue tail.

So she daydreams--how would she look with a tail like a bunny? Like a squirrel? Like a deer? and so on. And a little skink looks absolutely adorable with all these tails (these are very funny illustrations), but no tail is as good as her own....

And in the end, it grows back.

After the story, as a bonus feature, there are a few activity pages that held the interest of my now eight year old.

This a great read aloud, and a great book to savour quietly.

More non-fiction books can be found at Non-fiction Monday, over at Picture Book of the Day.

Misc notes from a weekend with books

Actually, my weekend was spent more with a kitchen cupboard (which I was stripping of its nasty toxic blue paint) than with books. But here are some misc. things from the book part:

Here is perhaps the best review I've ever read of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, by Joan Aiken, with asides on orphans, card cataloguing, Beany Malone, etc. The article is written by Laura Lippman (a writer for grown-ups I've never read), and the website that it appears in, Jezebel, is not one that in general appeals to me (celebrity, sex, and fashion are the topics in its banner). On Fridays, however, Jezebel asks guest columnists to write about their favorite children's and YA books, and I will be going back again to read more. It was also rather nice to see 57 commenters saying how much they loved this book too...

It was my son's birthday on Saturday--he is now 8. Along with Queen's Greatest Hits, which he had specifically requested, and other stuff, we gave him five books, all of which were non-fiction (I guess he's not yet in on the shared secret about fiction vs non-fiction). And it was very gratifying to see him take one of his new books (Building Big, by David Macauley) to camp with him.

He will be reading some fiction this summer, as there are no non-fiction books on his summer reading list. The theme is Mysteries, and they are required to chose three books from a list of authors/series. Surely there are some non-fiction books that follow a mystery format, that could have been included?

And speaking of summer reading books, I was at Barnes and Nobel, buying Queen's Greatest Hits, and wandered over to the summer reading display tables. I was very surprised indeed to see Forever, by Judy Blume (1975), prominently displayed, and have been brooding ever sense about what the person who picked it was thinking. The sex ed part? the historical portrayal of the 70s? the controversies books can stir up? It was banned in my private girl's high school, but we all of course read it anyway.

While I was in B. and N., I just happened to pick up The Adoration of Jenna Fox, which I had tried to buy the day before in the independent bookstore next to the toy store where I spent way too much money on a T. Rex erector set, but they didn't have a copy. I read it in one sitting. It is ironic that when all the reviews shout that there's a spoiler they aren't going to talk about, the book actually acquires a slight spoiled-ness, because you know a twist is coming. I had vaguely thought that Jenna becomes a goddess in some futuristic setting, and was a bit disappointed when I figured out very soon (page 2) that this wasn't going to happen.

Then I went back to the kitchen and did some sanding.

Sunday garden stroll on Monday

Bad, bad home computer has decided it hates my blog, which is one reason why I have been quiet lately.

So a day late, here are the pictures I took for Cloudscome's Sunday Garden Stroll. Incidentally, I hate July and August as gardening months. Sure, there are some pretty things blooming, like this crocosmia, but as always, it is too dry, I haven't mulched enough, planted enough, weeded enough, etc. I guess I just like to leave myself plenty of room for improvement, so I have something to daydream about next year.

What we do have a lot of is zucchinis, even though there are only three plants. I would like to sell them at the library for 25 cents each, but my husband says that this would be both weird and possibly against the law. But 64 zucchinis sold, and I could buy a book. We are getting four a day, so it would only take two and a half weeks....

Reading my mother's books

A copy of They Came to Baghdad, by Agatha Christie, arrived yesterday in a box of booksale donations from a co-worker, and I happily read it on the bus ride home. I first encountered this story of deadly intrigue, archaeology, and romance when I was a teenager, and my mother decided that I was ready to begin reading her books, perhaps as an antidote to all the fantasy I was re-re-reading. They Came to Baghdad was one of the first of her 1960s paperbacks* that she put in my outstretched hands, along with a few other Agatha Christies, her Mary Stewarts, the Hornblower series, Joesphine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, and Ellis Peters' medieval mysteries. All of which I would enthusiastically recommend to teenagers today. Especially the Ellis Peters.

I doubt my sons will ever want to read my collection of British Girls Books (although if they do, more power to them). But they will be reading their mother’s books, because I have cunningly put lots of them in their rooms already—all my Rosemary Sutcliff, E. Nesbit, Edward Eager, Jean Craighead George, and many, many, more. I am a bit anxious, however, about the boys seizing my books through eminent domain and disappearing into their own adulthoods with them. But perhaps boys are different, and don’t take their childhood comfort reading off to college with them?

Which in turn leads me to wonder—do boys/men do the comfort re-reading thing in the same way that avid female readers do? My husband, the only male reader whose habits I know, does not. Certainly at this point in their young lives my sons have books that they want over and over again--will that stop?

*somehow she managed to find boxes for all her paperbacks during all the many moves we made, yet (as I've said before), there was no room for the Enid Blytons....coincidence, or conspiracy?

Timeslip Tuesday--A String in the Harp

A String in the Harp, by Nancy Bond (1976)

15 year old Jen Morgan wants to enjoy visiting her her family for Christmas in a small village on the coast of Wales. They had moved there after Jen's mother was killed in a car accident, leaving her in her American high school. When she arrives, she finds that her family is breaking apart. Her father is withdrawn, her brother Peter angry and sullen, and her sister Becky is lonely. And the cold house where they live, sandwiched between the edge of the sea and the great, ancient expanse of Borth Bog, is not a home. Jen decides to stay in Wales, to make a home for her family and bring them together. In this she is helped by the old magic of this lonely place.

This is the part of Wales where the Lost Land was drowned, and where the great bard Taliesin lived. On one of his many lonely walks, Peter finds a harp key that takes him back in time to view Taliesin's life-- a past both beautiful and terrible.

"Outside, the wind had begun in earnest. It came in hard gusts up the coast from the southwest, flinging its self at the houses on the top of Borth cliff, hurtling over miles of churning sea. Waves drove across the wide beach to the very foot of the sea wall, making the thin string of houses look terribly vulnerable.

Something was coming. Peter knew it, and he was pretty sure he was going to be involved in it. Against his skin the Key felt hot. There was no vibration as yet, but...Peter was afraid and yet he couldn't take it off, he couldn't get rid of it. He was drawn to the Key even as it frightened him. He wished someone else knew. Jen was the only person he could imagine telling, but he had sense enough to see she was in no mood to believe such an outrageous story. he heard the girls talking in the kitchen and felt very much alone, but he'd refused them."

When Peter does tell Jen, at first she can't believe in the magic of the key, but gradually she and Becky are drawn in too, to help Peter return the key to its owner-a journey that will take him back in time...

I have been re-reading this book for decades. It is not simply a magical timeslip story, a must read for anyone (like me when I was younger) enchanted by the history and mythology of Wales. It is also one of my favorite family stories, with great characterization and its appealing (well, to me) plot of older sister trying to help her family--having to learn to cook, and that sort of thing...These two elements--the magic and the familial--are both treated seriously, and it is the seamless meeting of the two, I think, that made this book such a favorite of mine. Also I thought the life of Taliesin, and Wales in general, were really really neat. I guess I still do.

"At the head of the valley they looked back, and it surprised neither of them to see the waters of Nant-y-moch stretched across the valley, filling the space they had just ridden the moterbike through."

Misc. comments: A String in the Harp is Newbery Honor Book, so happily it is still easy to find. It does not seem at all dated-I imagine the weather in Wales in winter is still much the same, and the feelings of culture shock, grief, and loneliness that this family feel are also timeless.



If you have a review of a timeslip story you'd like to share for this week's Timeslip Tuesday, please leave me a link! Thanks.

Girl, Hero by Carrie Jones

Yesterday my boys had a little girl over to play, who’s the same age (7) as my oldest. They are a bit sweet on each other. The children were playing dress-up (knights and princess), and I was reading Girl, Hero, the new book by Carrie Jones, coming this August. I emerged from its riveting pages long enough to hear the following conversation:

Youngest son, to little girl: “S., can I rescue you now?”

S: “[Oldest son] is already rescuing me.”

Youngest son, still hopeful: “Can’t I rescue you too?”

S: “No. I don’t need you.”

Youngest son: sigh.

Me, to myself: “Gender stereotypes! Argh! Girls don’t need rescuing!” And I thought of the recent flurry of thought about this issue over at Guys Lit Wire. And as I returned to Girl, Hero, I decided that this is a book that I will try to get my boys to read when they are teenagers. It’s a book that will, perhaps, help them understand what it might feel like to be a girl stuck in a situation that stinks in many ways. A girl who would like so much to be rescued, but who, in the end, learns that taking action beats escapist day-dreaming.

Here’s what’s bad in the life of Liliana Faltin: her beloved stepfather died, her mom’s creepy, creepy, creepy (and alcoholic) new boyfriend has moved in, her best friend has proved shallow and unfriend-worthy, she is beginning to realize her father is gay, and her sister is being beaten up by her husband. All this is told in Lily’s letters to John Wayne, her hero, the man of action who always went in with guns blazing. Unlike Lily.

Because it’s hard for a freshman in high school to pull out metaphoric guns and start firing away. It’s hard to figure out what you can and can’t do in situations that are too horrible to talk about with your peers, especially when you are trying to make new friends (because your old best friend’s a jerk) and one of the new friends is a cute boy…

Despite the fact that this story is told in letters to a dead movie star (which I was initially doubtful about), and the writer of the letters is an unhappy teenage girl, the plot moves along briskly, without descending to maudlin introspection. Liliana is a great character—lovable and slightly wacky. The supporting cast don’t become nearly as real—but this book is so much about Liliana, and is told so firmly in her voice, that it would have been strange for them to be completely three-dimensional. They are the objects off which the echolocation of Liliana’s thoughts bounces as she tries to figure out where she is (apologies to anyone who finds this metaphor tortured).

That being said, here’s another reason why I am going to try to get my boys to read the works of Carrie Jones. She writes the nicest high school boys ever (in this book, it’s Paolo, who’s cool and sweet and understanding), and I want my sons to be that nice too. Although even Paolo has to be put in his place:

I [Lily] say, "If zombies were chasing you and you had to run away, parkour* style, what would you do?"....
Paolo thinks for a second, still walking. "Are you with me?"
"Why?"
"Because then I'd have to take care of you, too."
"No. You don't have to worry about me, just rescuing yourself."

Fortunately, Carrie Jones is not one of those authors who puts in a lot of texting and slang and reference to this year's popular culture and stuff like that, so her books should not be too terribly dated seven years from now...and sadly, seven years is probably not enough time for being gay to become a non-issue and Amnesty International to become irrelevant.

*parkour being that extreme running where you practically run up vertical walls. Part of why Paolo is cool.

Carrie Jones is also the author of Tips on Having a Gay (ex)Boyfriend, and its sequel, Love (and Other Uses for Duct Tape), making Girl, Hero her first published book without a parenthetical title. It has also been discussed in duelling reviews at The Edge of the Forest and at Teens Read Too.

Crocs! For Poetry Friday

"It really is a pity
That you had to leave the city
Because of all the horrifying critters

GIANT tabby cats
And defiant scabby rats
Large enough to swallow baby-sitters"

So begins Crocs, by David T. Greenberg, illustrated by Lynn Munsinger (2008, Little Brown). The hero flees the horrors of the urban jungle, to a tropical island where at last he feels at peace. But this does not last long:



"Pudgy as a panda
relaxed on your veranda
wiggling your toes within your socks

You sadly have no notion
All around you, in the ocean
Are tons and tons of terrifying CROCS!"

The crocs are wild, and scary, and wacky as all get out (as only Lynn Munsinger's crocs could be). They wreck crodocilian havoc, but in a playful way, luring the child into their reptilian world, and things are working out happily. Then a croc whose like you've never seen in a picture book before emerges from the ocean...

Cliche time (but true none the less): "playful, rollicking verse" coupled with "enchantingly diverting pictures." (Although actually I don't think "diverting" is used that much). But regardless, this book is fun to read aloud, and fun to look at, and kind of strange. Definitely one for the child who appreciates more than a bit of surreality with their playful, rollicking verse.

David T. Greenberg has, according to the jacket flap, been dubbed "our emerging poet of Gross" by the New York Times. There was only one small grossness in this book, however. I haven't read any of his other books (Slugs, for instance), but I shall look for them. Lynn Munsinger I already know and love, on account of Tacky the Penguin and Custard the Dragon.

For more Poetry Friday fun, head over to the roundup at Under the Covers.

More about age banding in the UK

For those interested in the proposed age banding of books* in the UK, which is due to begin this fall-- here's the media page of the Publisher's Association, with links to articles from yesterday and today about where things stand. (JK Rowling has now signed the petition against it...but does she actually have any clout left?)


*not a sticky label you can peel off, but actually part of the cover, saying 5+, 7+, etc.

Timeslip Tuesday--Frannie In Pieces

Today's Timeslip book is Frannie in Pieces, by Delia Ephron (2007, Harper Collins, 374 pp). Warning: this is a spoilerish review (for instance, I've already indicated that this is a timeslip story, which the reader won't even start realizing until page 142,and the where and when parts aren't made clear until much later. However, the reader finds out on page 6 that Frannie's father has just died, so I too feel comfortable starting there, without spoiling too much.

Frannie's parents are divorced, and although she lives with her mother, she spends much of her time happily with her father, helping him scrounge for found art in the trash, admiring his woodworking, and doing her own drawings. But one afternoon, she finds him lying dead on the bathroom floor. Sorting through his belongings weeks later, she finds a present--a beautiful wooden box, with her name, Frances Anne, and the number 1000, engraved on it. Inside are painted wooden puzzle pieces, and a picture of a village by the sea. Taking home this gift, she starts to secretly piece the puzzle together...and (Oh bother. I don't want to spoil it. But this is where the timeslipping happens).

In the meantime, her mother has landed her with a job as a camp counselor, where she sets the kids to work on a collage of common household poisons (until they start having nightmares) and tries to think of cunning retorts to throw back at her cute, and very annoying, fellow counselor Simon. Her best friend Jenna is in love, the existence of her stepfather has shifted her relationship with her mother for the worse, and above all, she misses her father. These unexceptional plot lines are leavened with humor, and Ephron is good at showing what Frannie is thinking without putting it into explicit words. When Jenna visits for the first time after Frannie's Dad dies, Frannie is trying to get under her bed. Here's Frannie's reaction, when Jenna begins to cry: "I scooted under the bed. All the way under this time. I am a turtle, and this is my shell." Frannie's time as a reluctant camp counselor is one of the more entertaining examples of this sub genre that I've read, and indeed, there are lots of little funny bits, such as a timetravling crumb of Velveeta cheese, that fell with Frannie into the puzzle...

Frannie slowly fits more pieces together, alone at night in her room, visiting the village by the sea, where, maybe, her father waits for her, and the book ends, logically enough, when the pieces are together. The time traveling element could easily have been left out of the book--the puzzle could have been just that, and Frannie could have put the pieces of herself and her family together without the help of its magic. And indeed, it takes so long for anything magical to happen, and she spends so little time in the magical “there” that it almost seems like an afterthought. But still, it made the book stand out in my mind—it would still have been a good book, but not as memorable as I found it.

If you have a timeslip review to share, please leave me a link!

Lisa of Under the Covers is in with a look at a great timeslip book for younger readers--Time Cat, by Lloyd Alexander. Thanks, Lisa!

Back home from home, and a 6 word memoir

I am just back from a trip down to my parents' house in Arlington, VA, and find that I've been tagged with a meme by Cheryl Rainfield:

1. Write a six-word memoir.
2. Post it to your blog including a visual illustration if you would like.
3. Link to the person who tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.
4. Tag 5 more blogs with links.
5. Don’t forget to leave a comment in the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

This is rather a timely meme for me, because my mother asked my sisters and me to clean out the attic, which we did yesterday morning, while she was out of the house, and I found a box of my old journals from college and grad school. They were rather melancholic ("I wish I were dead"), which I think is simply a reflection of my age (young) and my youthful tendency to write when less than sober, but still, reading it all made me appreciate very much the place I am in now.

So, Memoir 1 -- "Sentimental"

"Happy, then lonely, now very happy."

Finding that too cloying, I moved in the opposite direction with Memoir 2 -- "Bitter"

"Past years, weeding. This year, weeding." (actually, I like weeding).

So here is my final attempt-- "Realistic"

"Not now. Go away. I'm reading."

My journals can easily be put away in my trunk here in my own home, but I'm not sure that my mother envisioned all the Nancy Drews (lots and lots), the complete Black Stallion series, and many more of that ilk, all taken down from the attic, unpacked and shelved in my grandfather's old room. This was made possible in part by putting some of his American history books carefully in stacks in the closet (they are rather nice books, and if one our children were to become a historian, it would be a shame if they had to buy them all over again). We put my mother's own stash of childhood books (mostly in French, so of little immediate use to any of her grandchildren) in a tidy pile on her chest of drawers. As I said above, she wasn't home. I wonder if she has noticed yet.

The meme says I have to tag five people, but that seems excessive, especially since it's not book related. I shall just tag one person, Cloudscome at A Wrung Sponge, because I bet she'd write a good memoir, and probably post a good picture.

Prince Caspian, the Movie

I quite enjoyed the movie of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and was vaguely looking forward to going to see Prince Caspian. Not so much, after reading this rather curmudgeonly take on it from today's Guardian...oh well.

Tennyson, by Lesley M.M. Blume

Welcome to this week's edition of Timeslip Tuesday. Please leave a link if you'd like to share a Timeslip review of your own (and it dosen't have to be posted today!). This week's book is Tennyson, by Leslie M.M. Blume (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008).






Eleven year old Tennyson, growing up in Mississippi during the Great Depression, knows that she has to keep her mother aware of the poetry of everyday life--the moment she fails, her mother will leave. And Tennyson and her little sister Hattie will be left behind in a ramshackle little house on the banks of the Mississippi River, while their mother heads off to chase her dream of being a famous writer.

One day it happens, and their Mama is gone. But instead of staying put, with their loving father to look after them, the girls are left at Aigredoux, the family plantation house, while their father searches for his wife. He had turned his back on Aigredoux, and the blood money that built it, years ago, but now his girls are given back to it, to the care of their Aunt Henrietta, whose only thought is to use them in marriage to rebuild the glories of the past.

Aigredoux has become an almost inhabitable ruin, described by Bloom as colorless, built of ice, melting like sugar in the rain, with its residents sheltering under mosquito nets to keep the falling plaster out of their hair. But her first night there, Tennyson travels back into the plantation's past, and sees

"...Aigredoux, basking in the flame of dawn sunlight, resotred to its former glory.

It asn't until she saw Aigredoux like this, blinding and beautiful and powerful, that Tennyson truly understood what it meant to be a Fontaine."

Her dreams show her the tragedies that happened at this place a hundred years ago, and she learns what her father meant by "blood money." She turns the past to her own use, writing the stories down, and sending them off to be published, so that her mother might read them, and come back to save her daughters.

At first I thought that Tennyson's trips back to the past, where she is just an observant ghost, were "extras" that enriched the book, but weren't as important as the present. But this slipping through time makes the house, and all it represents, real. Tennyson's travels through time are a pretty powerful way of showing the power of the past to effect the present. And in providing her with her stories, the past becomes an active agent in shaping the course of events.

A bit of light relief is provided by a New York editor and his ghastly journey south, but in the main, it is the ghosts of a dark past, and the unhappiness of a decaying present, that dominate this book.

Incidentely, if I were writing an essay for school about this book (and I'm sure many are going to be--this is the sort of book with so much depth to it, so much history and so many layers of meaning that I'm sure it will be assigned reading in many classrooms), I'd focus on the house. Blume's writing consistently makes the house a living entity--"War was coming. The house was losing its color, like a woman whose face goes white with fear." Or one could write quite a bit on why "Tennyson," as opposed to, say, "Shelley," as a romantic poet to be named after. Perhaps Blume was thinking of Tennyson's poem, Mariana--"With blackest moss the flower- plots were thickly crusted, one and all." etc. Perhaps not.

Other reviews of Tennyson can be found at .com/?p=2558">Semicolon and at The Reading Zone, and here's one from Miss Erin, who jumped the gun and reviewed this last fall. There's an interview with Bloom at Bookworm Readers, and here is Blume's own webpage.

Books I read in June

Here's the list of books I read in June, not counting picture books, re-reads, or the books read in that happy 48 hour period earlier this month when I took part in Mother Reader's challenge (my list for that is here and here). Or, of course, the books I can't remember...

Magic Lessons, and How to Ditch Your Fairy, by Justine Larbalestier. My review of the later is here.

The Gates of Bannerdale, by Geoffrey Trease. The last in the very engaging Bannerdale series (published 1949-1956), about four children growing up in the Lake District, takes Bill and Penny to Oxford University. This series was recently reprinted by Girls Gone By Publishers.

Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, by Kary Mullis. He won the Nobel Prize for chemistry. I would have liked more chemistry in this book and less about Kary Mullis, with whom I seem to have little in common (for instance, I believe in the deleterious effect of human behaviour on the earth's climate, and have no desire to go to strip clubs).

Sally by Louise Dickinson Rich (1970). Rich is best known for her autobiography We Took to the Woods, but after leaving the woods, she wrote several children's books, this being one of them. It is a rather unconvincing portrayal of a seemingly autistic boy being miraculously rehabilitated by life on an island off the coast of Maine, partly due to the efforts of Sally, the orphaned foster daughter of the boy's grandparents.

Tennyson by Lesley M.M. Blume, and
Frannie in Pieces by Delia Ephron, both of which I hope to review in the near future, as in, perhaps, tomorrow, since they are both timeslipish, and tomorrow is Tuesday, which is when I write about such books.

Angel's Gate, by Gary Crew (1995). Mainly about the capture and rehabilitation of the two wild children of a murdered prospector in Australia, told from the point of view of the young boy whose family takes them in.

House of Many Ways, Diana Wynne Jones. More on this later, d.v.

The Seeing Summer, by Jeannette Eyerly (1981). This starts out pretty well, with one girl overcoming her reluctance to make friends with another girl who is blind, but when the blind girl got kidnapped, I lost interest.






And finally, Lock and Key, by Sarah Dessen, a ya book which was a great pleasure to read.




I also raised another $1,300 for my library with a used book sale this month, and am busily preparing a list of books I'd like to buy to offer our children's librarian for her consideration....

Cool books with which to escape summer

Els over at Librarian Mom has a list up of ten great summer time books-that is, books that take place during summer vacation. They are very good books indeed.

But I myself find that, when the temperature starts getting up there and the humidity decides to play too, and the plants and the family all wilt miserably, I prefer winter time books. So as an antidote to summer, here are some good reads that will take you to cool places (literally).

Winter Holiday, by Arthur Ransom. A frozen lake in the north of England gives a group of children the chance to live the life of arctic explorers, culminating in a race to the "north pole" through a raging storm. This is my favorite of the Swallows and Amazons books.

My favorite of the Moomin books (Tove Jansson) is also the coldest-Moominland Midwinter. If you read one winter book this summer, it should be this one. A troll child wakes from hibernation to find his summertime world transformed. The creature to the right is the Groke, a being so cold that it freezes whatever it sits on...

Peak, by Roland Smith. You can't get much colder than the top of Mount Everest. Unless you flip through The Fellowship of the Ring to that bit where they are stuck in the snow on the pass of Caradhras...

The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean. I'm not one of those who fell in love with this tale of a teenage girl caught in a web of madness in Antarctica, but maybe if I'd read it during the summer, instead of in December, I'd have liked it more.

The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula Le Guin. One of the best horribly cold, horribly long trips through winter ever written, on one of the coldest habitable planets ever imagined.

The Long Winter, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. A great book for making the reader appreciate a sunny day and a few tomatoes.

Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George. A girl survives the arctic cold by becoming part of a wolf pack. I like the wintry bits in George's My Side of the Mountain very much--especially the idea of spending winter inside a hollow tree. But there's a lot of spring, summer, and fall as well, so I don't count it.

And Both Were Young, by Madeline L'Engle. An introverted, misfit girl at a Swiss boarding school, young love, and lots of ski-ing. What's not to like?

The Year of Jubilo, by Ruth Sawyer. Lucinda, from Roller Skates, hunkers down with her family for a long winter in a small house in Maine. There's some bits of other seasons too, but the bit that really sticks in my mind is this: one way the family got the house winterized was by poking wool in all the window cracks with a knitting needle. Every fall I keep meaning to try this myself.

Another one I liked lots as a child is Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates. by Mary Mapes Dodge It's a bit too didactic for my tastes these days, but still, cold as all get out, which is the immediate point. Who can forget little Gretel crying on the frozen rubbish heap, or the great ice-skating journey on Holland's frozen canals?

My husband suggests Tom Fobble's Day, by Alan Garner--one of the Stone Book Quartet, it is about the making of a sledge, and the power and continuity of tradition. (He also suggested some darling Thomas the Tank engines stories). He has just come back in with Letters from a Lost Uncle (from Polar Regions), written and illustrated (brilliantly) by Mervyn Peake. Both of these are cold books for younger readers.

And then, if one still feels too hot, one can get lost in the Wild Wood in winter with Mole (The Wind in the Willows).

Splat the Cat

Well. Midsummer's Day is past, the days are getting shorter, and winter is on its way. Once again spring was too short for all that I wanted to do. However, there is always next year. I always looked forward to the new school year for this reason--it was a fresh start, a blank slate, a chance to actually acquire good study habits (I pulled my first all-nighter in 5th grade. I have not made any progress since then).

So in this hopeful, looking forward to school frame of mind, today's book review is a first day of school story: Splat the Cat, written and illustrated by Rob Scotton (HarperCollins, 2008). Never before has an artist so vividly captured the anguished nervousness, verging on hysteria, of a kitten who doesn't want to go to school.

Splat is scared stiff on the morning of his first day of school, and every little hair in his fur is charged with electric tension. To comfort himself, he packs his pet mouse, Seymour, in his lunch box. But when he opens it, and the other kittens see A MOUSE, pandemonium ensues as they chase after him. Splat goes Splat as he tries to save his friend. But Seymour wins the approbation of the class when he is able to open the jammed milk cupboard, and Splat, now that he knows the other kittens believe cats can love mice, looks forward to the next day of school.

The illustrations offer engaging shifting perspectives, a tremendously amusing cat child, and some visual jokes for the keen eyed child or adult. But the pictures lost me when Splat arrived at school. Splat is an unclothed black cat. All the other kittens are clothed, greyish, shadowy and kind of spooky cats. It's a scary school even before the other children try to capture Splat's beloved pet.

In short, this isn't a book I would recommend to the child nervous about the first day of kindergarten- I'd suggest Rosemary Well's animal children instead. This book is more for unflappable kids, and grownups, who like their picture books slightly surreal and slightly slapsticky.

Pictures from Splat the Cat can be found at Rob Scotton's website. Another review can be found at Cheryl Rainfield's blog-- she finds the book reassuring, not kinda scary, the way I do.

Scotton is also the author of Russell the Sheep. Having typed that, I am wondering if it is a pun, as in cattle rustling. Probably not, because if Scotton had wanted to make that joke, he would have written Russel the Cow/Bull. Oh well.

Timeslip Tuesday-- The Gauntlet, by Ronald Welch

Welcome to this week's edition of Timeslip Tuesday. Please send me links to your own timeslip reviews! They don't have to have been posted today--time is malleable, after all, and I'm happy to post links to books reviewed in the distant past.

The first timeslip book that I can remember reading was The Gauntlet, by Ronald Welch (1951). I was 9-ish, and well on my way to a love affair with all things medieval, and I thought this book was just the greatest thing ever.

On the wild hills of Wales, lost in the mist, an English boy named Peter finds a gauntlet laying on the grass.

"Hardly realizing what he was doing, he slipped his right hand inside the heavy gauntlet, and his fingers groped inside the wide spaces, for it was far too large for his small hand.

From behind there came the thud of hooves, a shout, shrill and defiant, the clang of metal on metal, and then a confused roar of sounds, shouts, more hoof-beats, clang after clang, dying away into the distance as suddenly as they had come. The gauntlet slipped form Peter's hand, and he shook himself as it he had just awakened."

Still in the present, Peter learns that he is related to the De Blois family, the Norman lords of the nearby ruined castle. In the local church, he finds the brass plaque commemorating a boy named Peter De Blois, who died 800 years ago.

The gauntlet takes him back to that time, and he becomes that long dead Peter, enjoying loving parents and the most luxurious life that Norman Wales can offer, but with the threat of a Welsh uprising a constant reality. Always over his head hangs the shadow of the real Peter De Blois, who died so young...and when the Welsh do attack, Peter must risk his own life to save the castle and his family

I found another copy of this book last year, and was prepared to be just as enchanted as I had been when I was nine. It didn't happen. I seem to have added in my own mind a lot of extra story involving Peter's relationships with his medieval parents, that wasn't there in the real book. Sigh.

Ronald Welch eschews such emotional characterization in favor of detailed lessons in medieval armor, falconry, food, warfare, and the like--this is one of those timeslip stories where the author uses the ignorance of his main character as a didactic platform. It's still a pretty good story, and I guess that at the time I must have found all the details of medieval life fascinating. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book to a young reader, but I think that us adult type readers of juvenile timeslips, with our more demanding expectations, might find it a bit too heavy handed. I also am now firmly on the side of the Welsh.

For more timeslip stories, please click on the label to the right.

Alligators and Polar Bears for Nonfiction Monday

In last week's Nonfiction Monday post, I reviewed a rather lovely book about hermit crabs by Janet Halfmann. Very impressed by her writing, I was inspired to read to my children two of her other books (whose numbers are legion).

The first was Alligator at Saw Grass Road, illustrated by Lori Anzalone (2006, Smithsonian's Backyard). And, as was the case of the hermit crab book mentioned above, this was the best picture book about alligators that I have read (I have read at least three others. Probably more. It is a testimony to their mediocrity that I can't remember what they were). My 7 year old, dismissive at first, was soon engrossed in the story of an female alligator and her children (whom we meet first in the egg). My 5 year old, less jaded, was enthusiastic from the start.


The second was Polar Bear Horizon, illustrated by Adrian Chesterman (2006, Smithsonian Oceanic Collection), telling the story of a mother polar bear and her young cubs. Since I haven't, to the best of my knowledge and belief, read any other non-fiction books about polar bears, I can't make any sweeping statements about this one. But we enjoyed it (except that it looks like the illustrator drew goofy smiles on all the bears, which got on my nerves a bit. But maybe polar bears just naturally come with goofy smiles?).

Both of these books are narrative non-fiction, with none of those informational sidebars that are so distracting for the one reading out loud. Halfmann's writing is clear and relaxed; it is a pleasure to read. Both these books are part of an institutional series, but do not at all feel pushed out quickly to meet that institutions specific requirements. And both these books are packed full of information, and interesting little plot elements, and include more explicitly informational details and glossary at the end.

I can now say with confidence that Janet Halfmann is my favorite narrative non-fiction author. Disclosure: although I got these books from the publisher, they did not slip me anything extra to ensure a good review.

For more non-fiction kid's books, head over to the Nonfiction Monday book roundup!

Sunday Garden Stroll

Last Sunday I posted a picture of the red rose climbing our barn. Here is is again, with the last of the roses now joined by a clematis:
We do not have a particularly communal approach to gardening--each of us has our own special bits, and special plants. These two are definitely my husband's plants--he picked them and planted them, and built their trellis.

Here's one of my own, a delphinium that I grew from a seed, and that I love dearly:



Has anyone else tried growing delphiniums from seed? I try every year, and this is the one plant that made it to maturity. I have not a clue as to where I am going wrong.

The tree holding up the delphinium is a Cox's Orange Pippin, one of the many apple trees my husband has planted (although, since I am an archaeologist and therefore Good With Shovels, I did the bulk of the hole digging).

For more Sunday Garden Strolling, visit A Wrung Sponge!

The Edge of the Forest is up

The June issue of The Edge of the Forest (an online monthly journal of children's literature) is up, and looks especially tasty:

* An interview with singer-songwriter—and author of Middle Grade fiction—Dar Williams, by YA author Carrie Jones.
* Poet J. Patrick Lewis graces The Edge of the Forest with a bittersweet original poem.
* Sarah Stevenson (a.fortis) and TadMack (Tanita S. Davis) talk vampires in Fiction with Fangs.
* Not one, but two Summer Reading features: Julie M. Prince takes reading to the pool and Sarah Mulhern suggests summertime reading for kids of all ages.
* Gail Gauthier is this month's Blogging Writer.
* We have three great columns this month: Candice Ransom considers The Long Summer for A Backward Glance, teacher Stacy Dillon gives us her students' picks for Kid Picks, and Little Willow tells us What's in Teens' Backpacks this summer.
* Reviews in all categories—from Picture book to Young Adult.

I shall now go read it...

The Doofuzz Dudes

The Doofuzz Dudes Rescue Moondar (2006), The Doofuzz Dudes: The Princess Detector (2006), The Doofuzz Dudes: The Babbling Bottles (2006), and The Doofuzz Dudes: the Black Pearl of Laramoth, all by Roslyn J. Motter, (White Hawk Publishing), illustrated by Kimberly Nelson. Ages 7-9.














I'm going to start by saying right out front that my seven year old adores, just adores, this series. Here are his thoughts: "The Doofuzz Dudes series is good for kids seven and older because it's very creative and has a lot of magic. (Five year old brother, a bit plaintively: But I like it). I really like this series, and my friends will like it too. It's really good. I like the writing and pictures, as well as the front covers. I enjoyed it. The use of words is very creative and increases some kids' vocabularies along with their reading and writing skills."

He is, in fact, the intended audience. And these books are great for the 7-8 year old boy, who has perhaps read the Dragon Slayer Academy series, but isn't ready for Harry Potter.

Back in February, Australian writer Roslyn J. Motter offered me books 1-4 of the Doofuzz Dudes series. Thinking they might appeal to my son (and how right I was), I accepted. When they arrived, I started reading to myself...but didn't get very far. So the four books languished for a while in one of my many book piles, until one day my son found them.

"Wow! What are these?" he asked. "They look cool!' And indeed the cover appeal of the books is quite high. So I started reading them out loud to him, and before long he was sufficiently engaged so as to read large chunks of the text to me (which is a most excellent thing for him to do, being not yet a truly independent reader). Before long, this had become his favorite series in the world. When he was asked to make a book character puppet for school, he chose Zarundok, a wizard character who appears in all the books. We read them slowly, because I kept making him do his share, but he was always anxious to get back to them. And he is looking forward to book number 5, which will be out in the relatively near future.

These are books that I would unhesitatingly give as birthday gifts to his contemporaries (particularly since they aren't available in bookstores in the USA, reducing the chances that the kid will already have them). As soon as we've finished this review, my son will be lending them to his friends. I'd like my public library to have copies, because I truly think they'll circulate, but it's looking like we'll be keeping our copies.

So, here's what they are:

In book one, we meet our hero, Toby Doofuzz, who is just about to turn nine. On his birthday party treasure hunt, Toby, his brother, and two friends (who call themselves the Doofuzz Dudes) find a mysterious chest buried in a cave. And in the chest is a book, "Spells for a Magical King," and a jeweled crown. Toby puts on the crown, and begins to read...and out of the book jump hundreds of small people. "All hail King Toby!" they cry, and so begins the quest of King Toby and his friends to restore these people, the Moondarians, to their homeland. Into a magical world they journey, lead by the wizard Zarundok, with each chapter bringing a new challenge--guard geese, a joking giant, the Puzzle Master, a dragon, biting trees, and the evil Prince Florian--until the inhabitants of Moondar are safely home.

In books two, three, and four, the boys return to face new challenges with Zarundok's help, meeting scores of fantastical creatures and journeying to strange new places. And always the shadow of Prince Florian looms over their adventures!

Episodic adventures in short chapters are a type of storytelling that, I think, works well for kids who aren't flying off on their own into longer and more complex books. However, these aren't books that most adult readers would want to curl up with, because the linear narrative style and episodic plots mightn't be quite complex enough to satisfy (at least they weren't for me). Likewise, the books' characters, although real enough for my son's purposes, don't quite achieve flesh and blood status in my more critical/jaded adult mind. However, the fourth book is by far the best, and book 5 may be better still.

The books are illustrated by the author's young niece, and for me, combined with the writing style, this created an illusion that the books themselves were written by someone young. I think that this is part of what makes the books so kid friendly--the unintimidating story telling might well make it easier for kids to become absorbed by the fantastical world of Moondar.

As I mentioned above, you won't be able to walk into a bookstore in the US and buy these books, but you can order them online here. For more information about the books, here's the Doofuzz Dudes website.

Boys and Reading--some rambling thoughts inspired by a great article

Via Jen Robinson's Book Page, I found this very, very interesting article from Reading Rockets --Boys and Books, by Jane McFann (2004). Here's the introduction:

The statistics are consistent: Young male readers lag behind their female counterparts in literacy skills. This article looks at the social, psychological, and developmental reasons why, and suggests solutions — including the need for more men to become role models for reading.

I think there are many more books available that have appeal to boys (see, for instance, Guys Read) than there were in my youth way back in the 70s (I could be wrong about this, since I myself was busily reading Enid Blyton ad nauseam at the time and not much else).

But it is hard, sometimes, for me to put the books my boys want into their outstretched and eager hands. It is much easier to buy books that appeal to me, than books that really truly don't. This is one reason I like libraries so much, because I let them check out anything their little hearts desire. Ditto those occasions when they help me with book sorting for the library used book sales. Well I remember the fight they had over the organic chemistry textbook two years ago--one wanted it so that I could teach him chemistry (ha ha ha), the other wanted it because it was red. The point of this, though, is that I think you can raise a child to love books even before they love the process of reading.

However, there are limits. When he was two, older son desperately wanted me to buy him an SAT practice book at a used book store (mainly, I think, because he wanted to color in all the circles). I wasn't about to spend $10 on it, and the ensuing emotional distress wasn't pretty. I did, however, buy him a really ghastly book about textiles a few months later. It was only $1, it made him happy, and it kept us from being persona non grata at that book store (unlike the one above), but still. It is harder when I take them to a real book store, where I am expected to spend real money.

What books have you bought for your own children that you can't stand, or read over and over to them despite well-concealed boredom or revulsion simply to encourage their love of books?

ps: One outstanding father in regard to reading to his son is Calvin's dad (from Calvin and Hobbs), who apparently has had to read "Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kabblooie" every night for years. Someone has actually had the nerve to write the book. I shall not dignify it with a link.