Horrid Henry

For a couple of years, I've been vaguely aware that, over in the UK, children have been reading and loving a series of books featuring a boy nicknamed "Horrid Henry," written by Francesca Simon, and illustrated by Tony Ross. Friends there have recommended them to me, I've seen them on lists of books nominated for the British children's choice awards, and I've seen that sometimes Horrid Henry books have been the winners (Horrid Henry and the Abominable Snowman won the Galaxy Award in 2008, and Horrid Henry Robs the Bank is on the 2009 short list) . What I hadn't seen, here in the United States, were the books themselves (on my trips to England, mostly I am looking in used bookstores for books for me).


But this has now changed (um, not the part about me, which is still true). As of April 1, 2009, the first four (of sixteen) Horrid Henry books are available in the US! And my eight-year old and I have read them.

These books are:
Horrid Henry
Horrid Henry Tricks the Toothfairy
Horrid Henry's Stinkbomb
Horrid Henry and the Mega Mean Time Machine


In a nutshell, Henry is a Bad Child. Any adjective that you can think of that would fit a bad child (rude, stubborn, picky, obnoxious, selfish, etc) could be applied to the boy. His little brother, however, is Perfect. Henry butts heads with the world (which he often finds not to his taste), his family, his teacher and classmates, and just about everyone he comes into contact with, in stories that are funny in a slightly un-nice, slapsticky way. For instance, Henry uses other campers' tent pegs to start a campfire, which would never have occurred to a Good Child, such as myself.



Yet despite the Horrid things Henry does, he is smart, and funny, and (almost) likable...My son (being, on the whole, eager to please), was somewhat taken aback, but none the less enjoyed the books. At 80-90 pages, with lots of black and white illustrations, these are great for the youngish independent reader.

Reviewing this series is tricky. It is easy to say "children will love the subversive wit" "children will be delighted by Henry's antics" etc, but what I really want to talk about is Henry's parents and what they are doing wrong, and what I would do if Henry and his brother ("Perfect Peter") were my children. But I realize that this is not the point. So I will fall back on "I am sure that American kids will read these books with just as much enjoyment as the children over in the UK on whom they have already been tested..." or something like that.



For more about Horrid Henry, and to read a sample story (Horrid Henry Tricks the Toothfairy, which is a very good one), here's the publisher's website- Sourcebooks.

"I Am Still a Bunny" by Ole Risom (not)

Minh Le of Bottom Shelf Books and Farida of Saints and Spinners are collaborating on a unique blog contest: Unnecessary Children's Book Sequels that Never Were.

Here is my entry:

"I Am Still a Bunny" by Ole Risom. We've already spent one fun-filled year with Nicholas the Bunny. Now the cute rabbit takes another trip through the seasons, in which he continues to be a passive, isolated observer of the pageant of life. "In spring, I watch other animals making friends." Children will be comforted by the fact that flowers still bloom, leaves still fall, and Nicholas is still watching them.

Tell me you weren't dying to know what didn't happen to Nicholas next.

I feel this sequel is so unnecessary that the same cover can be used again:



This is actually one of my favorite picture books of all time. Would that more of us were like Nicholas.

Hilary McKay, however, does not share my opinion. Here is her description (from The Exiles):

"Pheobe had decided on...a story about a rabbit named Nicholas who lived, unnaturally, in a hollow tree. In spring this animal watched the flowers grow; in summer he spoke once, briefly, to a bee; in autumn he detachedly observed the falling of the leaves; and in winter, with the first deep snow, he put on striped pajamas and went to bed.

And died of boredom, thought Naomi, discarding Nicholas."

Either McKay did not look at the book before writing this, or the UK edition is different. Two things are wrong in this synopsis...

Waiting on Wednesday--Sacred Scars, by Kathleen Duey and thoughts on cliffhanging

Reaching the end of Kathleen Duey's great book, Skin Hunger, is tantamount to galloping along with the rest of your buffalo herd and then, whoops! You've just been driven over a cliff, and suddenly you are falling....This is perhaps a bad metaphor, but "cliffhanger" doesn't do this ending justice.

Anyway. The sequel to Skin Hunger, Sacred Scars (A Resurrection of Magic, Book 2) will be out August 4, 2009, and can be pre-ordered now! I am glad to know in advance what I will be re-reading on August 2nd.

Another cliffhanger that I read this past year was The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness. But that was more of the author yanking the reader's chain by introducing the cliffhanger in the last few paragraphs. In the more nuanced version, it is clear that the writer has to end somewhere because there are limits (Skin Hunger and The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss, being examples of this. Waxing metaphorical again, I found reaching the ending of later more like giving in and going to bed at three in the morning, leaving half of the book unread. Perhaps this more gentle reaction on my part stems from knowing where the main character is going to end up, although not knowing how or why).

Ideally, of course, every book should give closure. Megan Whalen Turner, for instance, manages to make every book of her Queen's Thief series End, while making each one a continuation of what came before. Another book I read recently, Laini Taylor's Blackbringer, Ends, while making it clear that there is room for more (Silksinger, coming soon).

But I am sure that Kathleen Duey and Patrick Rothfuss both felt rather cliffhung themselves, and will be very glad themselves when the books are finished. I am not angry, nor do I cast blame. I just want the next books....(I do not claim to know what Patrick Ness thinks. I am still sore).

Timeslip Tuesday- The Devil's Arithmetic

This week's Timeslip Tuesday book (it was supposed to be last week's, but things happened) is The Devil's Arithmetic, by Jane Yolen (1988). In modern-day New York, a girl named Hannah is dragging her feet about going to her family's Passover Seder. She's tired of her extended family, and their constant remembering--she knows her grandfather survived a concentration camp, but his rants about the Nazis are nothing more to her than an embarrassment. But when she opens the front door, to let the prophet Elijah in, her life changes. Now she is Chaya, living in a Polish village in 1942, and the Nazis have their concentration camps up and running.

All too soon they arrive in Chaya's village. When the Nazis round the villagers up and cram them into boxcars, the girl from the future knows she is going to have to try to survive some of the worst horrors imaginable. When she returns to the future, she, too, has memories--of death, of friendships blooming in the most unlikely places, of the blue numbers tattooed on her aunt's arm.

Yolen does a fine job of portraying the hellishness of a concentration camp, keeping her description just bearable enough for a young reader to keep reading. And she does a fine job in telling of the importance of remembering the past. I wish, though, that she'd given us a bit more of the characters. They are almost truly real, but to me they were always just a tad overshadowed by the Larger Messages. I had read this one years ago, and did not remember caring for it over much--this may have been why. Still, speaking as one who advocates the teaching of history through fiction, this is a great middle-grade book from which to learn about the Holocost.

Timeslip-wise, it's clear that the time travelling is so that Hannah can Learn, and that weakens the magic of it. So although this book has many good points, it isn't one I'd recommend as a sterling example of Timeslip Genre as such.

This is my 22nd Timeslip review-when I get to 25 I'll make a list!

The Name of the Wind

I just finished reading The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, Day 1), by Patrick Rothfuss (Daw 2007, 662 pp). I am sad that I have turned the last page of the story, and will have to wait for book 2, but so happy to be able to say--Wow! Go read this book, or put it in the hands of any fantasy loving teenager asap! It was great!

It starts in an inn, miles from anywhere of importance. It starts slowly, and darkly, with the innkeeper obsessively polishing his bottles in a too-often empty room. Outside, weird metallic spider things that shouldn't be there are attacking people. On the road, drawing closer to the inn, is the Chronicler. He has heard a rumor about this innkeeper, and is coming to find his story. Because the innkeeper is actually Kvothe the Bloodless, the Kingkiller, of whom a hundred stories are told. The Chronicler is about to be told the truth.

Kvothe's story starts with a happy childhood, travelling with loving parents, performing with them, learning chemistry, physics, math, and magic from a wise old man who has joined them on the road. He is beginning to dream of the University, where he might go to read all the books in the best library in the world, and learn for himself the name of the wind.

I don't want to go on describing the plot--why spoil a good story? Very bad things happen, good things happen. There is a vegetarian dragon, the best Magical University I've been in outside of Earthsea, and lots of music. There's beautiful, and not very kind girl, who has secrets. There are chemical accidents, mysterious deaths, underground rooms (that we don't find out enough about here in book one argh), young Kvothe is a great character, and....

There were, it must be said, bits that dragged a tad, which could perhaps have used a bit of editing (I'm not sure, for instance, that the vegetarian dragon added much). And the girl character. I'm not sure what I think about her, but I'm willing to suspend judgement until I find out more.

But wow. It took me longer to get to this book than planned, because I had to spend several days watching my dear husband reading it, drawing farther and farther away from his loving family with each page...here is his reaction: "Didn't you get p....off at the end when you realized you weren't going to find out how the story ends?" He really liked it. Upon reading this, he requests that I add that he "has no patience with fantasy writing that is a mere collection of clichéd furniture with no story to tell."

In short, here is a great book about a teenaged protagonist, a fantasy that is fresh and exciting with no magic talismans (talismen?) or Quests, which leaves the reader dying for more (poor Patrick Rothfuss has gotten some nasty email as a result--he, too, would like to have Book 2 written).

The Name of the Wind is on this year's Nebulla shortlist (that's how I heard of it), and, apparently, would have won the Locus Award for Best Debut Fantasy if the votes of Locus suscribers hadn't been counted twice.

I don't exactly like the American cover, so here's the UK one. I don't exactly like that either.

Lots of dead bodies, some bad dreams, a hound, and a family of vicarage children--my week in review

I've read more books this week than I have time to review, and rather than have this week's reading vanish into the Mists of Time, here are my reactions. They were all good reads, by which I mean books that made me turn the pages at a brisk clip and which followed me around the house, as opposed to the books that sit forgotten in forlorn loneliness on the windowsill, kitchen counter, or bedside table. But they weren't quite good enough to make me want to leave off working outside yesterday to come in and write about in detail.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan (Delacorte, 2009. 320pp, YA). Mary lives in a fenced village, with uncountable zombies trying to get in. The horrible claustrophobia of it all is rather effective, as is the horrible uncertainty of not knowing what is outside--are there other villages? Is there really an ocean? Is there a point to continuing life in what might be a dead end? There are so many zombies, however, that they began to overwhelm me (as well as sundry villages). And I thought there were too many questions left hanging, although all the loose ends make me anxious for the sequel...As a member of Team Unicorn, I tried to imagine what the book would be like with Bad Unicorns--The Forest of Hoofs and Horns. Although I did not switch my allegiance, I concluded that zombies were a better choice.

Fade, by Lisa McMann (2009, Simon Pulse, 256pp, YA). I found this just as page turning as its prequel, Wake, although not quite as satisfying. Janie and Cabal are now doing their best to make a go of life as a couple, while trying to help the police snare a suspected sexual predator at their school. And all the dreaming she's been doing is taking a toll on Janie. Her eyesight is failing, her hands growing old before their time. I have one major criticism of this one--Janie's dreams seem to have been absolutely no help in cracking the case. Any undercover high school operative could have done what she did, so what was the point?

The Bone Magician, by F.E. Higgins (2008, Feiwel & Friends, 288pp, YA)
is one of those stories that I vaguely feel are ubiquitous about a boy living in a seedy city making a living under unwholesome and un-nurturing conditions. There's a creepy killer on the loose, and creepy magic being practiced. A Bone Magician and his assistant are making the dead talk...For much of this book, I kept wondering when things would Start Happening, and Pin, the young boy, would leave the city and set out to find the truth about his father, and discover magic of his own, or something, but it stayed firmly put in the stench-filled streets where the story begins. After a while, I decided this didn't matter--the atmosphere, personalities, and magic carry the book along quite nicely. This is a "paraquel" to The Black Book of Sequels, and it appears that the two casts of characters will meet in the next book....

The Princess and the Hound, by Mette Ivie Harrison (HarperTeen 2007 416pp, YA) was an impulse library pick-up. I'd heard good things about it, but hadn't read it. A prince with animal speaking magic (which he must keep secret, or be burned alive) must marry a princess from neighboring kingdom. The princess comes with a hound, her only close companion...

Spoiler

Here is a bit of complaint. I think that when an author expects me to invest in getting to know a character (Princess Beatrice) it is not fair to turn her back into the hound she really was and send her off into an unnatural relationship with a bear.

The Vicarage Children, by Lorna Hill (originally published in 1961, reissued by Girls Gone By Publishers in 2008, Middle Grade). Kind of like The Four Story Mistake, set in a Northumbrian vicarage in the middle of the 20th century (although Enright is a much better writer than Hill). The vicarage has no modern conveniences and a leaky roof (although it does have a Centurian's grave in the garden). The family (mother, father, four children) is very poor, and much of the story concerns the issues of the oldest sister, who does not like being a pretty teenager with no money, and suffers from the perennial "I need a party frock" desperation that plagues so many fictional impoverished girls in post-war England (although I guess 1961 isn't really all that post-war, qua post-war). The middle sister, the narrator, is a pleasantly interesting child, and the sense of place is lovely.

So these were my pleasure reading this past week. And yesterday I started reading The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, Day 1)...that one is definitely going to get its own review.

This year's official Oddest Book Title is...

The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais.

You can read more about it here, and see the books it beat. My personal favorite is The Large Sieve and Its Applications: Arithmetic Geometry, Random Walks and Discrete Groups. It sounds rather soothing, somehow. Not like those nasty planned walks.

Now I am wondering if my sieve is large enough for me to try this at home...

Radio interview with Alan Garner

Just a quick post to offer this link to a recent radio interview with Alan Garner (author of The Weirdstone of Brisingaman and The Owl Service): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00j6xxz

Here's the BBC's description of it: John Waite meets Alan Garner, author of the book that helped shape Waite's own childhood, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, to discuss his life and writing career.

He discovers how Garner had his mouth scrubbed with carbolic soap at primary school to rid him of his thick Cheshire accent, what happened when he heard himself declared dead - twice - and how nothing has influenced him more strongly than his artisan ancestors who have lived in the area for centuries.

John also hears from Garner fans including academic Charles Butler and novelist Philip Pullman.

Waiting on Wednesday--The Magic Thief: Lost

Here is a present I am going to buy myself on May 12th:

The Magic Thief: Lost, by Sarah Prineas.


Or I might well pre-order a signed copy (which you can do here).

I looovveeddd Prineas' first book, The Magic Thief (a Cybils short list; here's my review), and it makes me so happy to think that I'll have book number two in my hot little hands in just a few weeks! And hopefully book number 3, The Magic Thief: Found, not too terribly long afterwards...it's just recently been copy-edited.

(as well as liking the words inside, I think these are very handsome books qua books. They are nice to hold and look at...friendly yet lavish)

The Hugo Awards Shortlist

Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Morrow; Atlantic UK)
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; HarperVoyager UK)
Saturn's Children by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi (Tor)

Wow! Three directly marketed as YA, one (Anathem) that features teenagers, one (Graveyard Book) that's for middle-grade readers on up, and, um, then there's Saturn's Children, about which Publisher's Weekly said "Sex oozes from every page of this erotic futuristic thriller..."

I also find it interesting that something that is as utterly un-sciency as The Graveyard Book made it onto the list for the most prestigious science fiction award.

Here's the rest of the ballot.

Watersmeet, by Ellen Jensen Abbott

Watersmeet, by Ellen Jensen Abbott (Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books, 341 pages, coming out April 1), is a page-turner. For those who like Hard Data, I offer this--I read the first 120 pages in a toxic, noisy environment-- my son's 45 minute swim lesson (I hate the smell of chlorine), and I was so engrossed that I completely abandoned my habitual practice of checking every few minutes to see if he was drowning (he wasn't).

Here's the story. Humans have staked out settlements in a land of "monsters"--centaurs, dwarves, fauns, and the like--and have met these monsters with hatred. The non-human creatures return the favor. Within the settlement walls, hatred also runs hot for those who fall short of this culture's physical ideal for humanity. One such is Abisina, outcast from birth because of her dark hair and skin. She thinks she knows hatred pretty well, but when a charismatic leader arrives at her village, and preaches death to all outcasts, she has to revise her opinion. Especially as she sees this leader for the hideous white worm that he is (literally).

Fleeing from the savage attacks of her neighbors, and the horror of her mother's death at their hands, Abisina sets out to find the father she never knew, to a place she does not know how to find--Watersmeet. On her journey beyond the mountains, she must learn to trust and value the native peoples of these lands. Without the help of two dwarves, she would never have lived to find her father. And when she meets her father, she must discard every vestige of her ingrained prejudices in order to be truly his daughter. He is the leader of the united folk of Watersmeet, who must now stand against the White Worm who threatens to destroy all that is beautiful and peaceful. He is also more than simply human...

Ok--this perhaps sounds like an old plot. Outcast girl sets off on a quest, helped by magical creatures, and finds a realm of the blessed, her lost father, and powers she never knew she had. But it's a good framework to hang a story on, when the author makes her main character someone to care about and respect, as Abbott does. I was, at first, a tad doubtful about the mythological creatures, but was pleased to find them interesting and varied--they avoid being cliches. And (as I mentioned above) Abbott knows how to tell a page-turning story. I would be happy to read more books set in her world.

I find the book's cover striking and compelling. It has the look of one of those edgy, dark, ya fantasies which are currently in vogue, and perhaps, given that in-vogueness, this was the intent. I did not, however, find the book itself as dark and edgy as all that (I could, of course, have become Hardened to it all), so I don't think the cover goes with the book (and in fact older teens judging the book by its cover might be a smidge disappointed).

While Watersmeet has dark moments, they do not last long, nor are they pitch black. Although the story begins with hatred and violence, it is terrible without being overly graphic, and although there is a very vivid battle scene, Abbott manages to convey the horror of it without recourse to an overload of gore. My feeling was that this book is on the young side of YA-- I can imagine this book being adored by fantasy loving seventh and eighth-graders, and even many sixth-graders (so I've put a middle grade tag on it, as well as YA).

Ellen Jensen Abbott has created a Teacher's Guide to accompany the book, which touches on such topics as war, prejudice, symbolism, the construction of the past and the construction of identity. Interesting stuff.

And here's another review, a glowing one, at Shelf Elf.

Watersmeet is Ellen Jensen Abbott's first published book, and is the first book I've read for the '09 Debut Author's Challenge. I'm hoping to read all the middle grade and ya fantasy/science fiction debut books that I can find (here's my list so far--please let me know if I'm missing anything!).

Why does What Katy Did do what it does in the UK?

About six years ago I started conversing online with British lovers of children's books (a mailing list called Girlsown). Obviously some differences were to be expected, but I was very taken aback by how highly What Katy Did (Susan Coolidge, 1872) is regarded by many British readers. They love it over there. Just yesterday it was featured Lucy Mangan's Book Corner at The Guardian yesterday, a column where she recommends books that should be included in a "brilliant" children's library.

Fondness for Katy, however, is not a trait shared by all British girls. Here is the reaction of Lucy Mangan's sister: "...she hurled it across the room shouting "Katy did nothing!" before stalking off to build a working model of a nuclear reactor in Meccano behind the sofa."

What Katy Did didn't do much for me either, although I would never throw a book across the room, and I have even gone back and re-read it. Only once, though. Whereas Little Women (which came out just a few years earlier, from the same publishers) I can practically recite. The plot of Katy is just too blah-ly Victorian--spunky, independent girl disobeys, is punished with a bad injury, and after attending "the school of pain" is all gentle niceness.

Here is a random cover from one of the many reprints. Guess what is going to happen to the swing (although it does not appear to be moving, which is odd):


I do not number among my American acquaintances anyone who is particularly fond of Katy. But why is she so beloved over there? (It is everywhere--any used book store in the British Isles will have at least three copies). Here's my theory of the moment (tongue in cheek): Katy, perhaps, is seen as the quintessentially bumptuous American who gradually acquires the culture and dignity of a Brit--at first a source of tolerant amusement, she later becomes a source of self-affirmation by embodying valued National characteristics. Or possibly there was just a really, really good marketing campaign, that spanned centuries. I shall ask, and report back.

(disclosure: Reader, I married one. Someone from England, that is. He has never read "What Katy Did," nor does he want to).

My wants list, or, why bother teaching handwriting

Jen Robinson has another of her lovely “reviews that made me want the book” posts up. Inspired by this, I am posting, just for the heck of it, my working wants list (this is different from my typed wants list, which I give to people who might be wanting to buy me presents, of whom there are, sadly, too few). It is a dynamic, living thing—you can see that what was once a nice place to doodle while on hold, down at the bottom of the page, is now a palimpsest of book want. Thanks, everyone, who reviewed or mentioned the books on the list! I’m sure I’ll enjoy reading them, just as soon as I’ve cleared out the backlog that resulted from last week's trigger-happy library book requesting.


This is one of those pictures that gets big when you click on it, if anyone actually wants to know what I want (although my birthday is not till January).

I really draw better than this! But stressful telephoning makes for less nice drawing. However, this is about as good as my writing gets.

My son's third grade teacher recently told us that our son should, for the moment, just learn to type, and they seem to have given up on cursive. I, myself, was taught beautiful handwriting, which is clear from the specimen above. At least I don't have to worry about anyone reading my high school diaries!

A Finder's Magic -- great bedtime fantasy for the young reader

A Finder's Magic, by Philippa Pearce, illustrated by Helen Craig (Candlewick, 2009, originallypublished in 2006 in the UK, 121 pages with lots of black and white pictures).

A small boy named Till has gone to bed distraught--his beloved dog Bess slipped her leash, and now she is gone. The next day he wakes up early, and drawn by a strong compulsion, heads out to the garden gate. There he finds "an odd-looking little old man, hardly bigger than himself, and dressed all anyhow."

The strange little man is a Finder, with all a Finder's magic, and he is determined to help Till find Bess. So Till sets of through the garden gate, magicked by the Finder into a day that isn't quite real, and heads back to the meadow where he last saw his dog.

There the Finder uses his arcane skills to question all the possible witnesses--duck and heron, mole and cat, and the two little old ladies who live at the meadow's edge. By slow steps and riddles a picture of Bess's last few minutes before she was lost emerge. But the clues seem point to the strange Finder himself, and Till worries that he will never see his dog again.

Part mystery, part fantasy, A Finder's Magic makes a great book to read at bedtime to a 6 to 8 year old. Its slow pace and gentle progress make it a soothing read with good stopping points (from a grown-up's point of view), while the urgency of Till's need to find Bess and the strange way the Finder sets about his work keep the story interesting. It's not particularly the sort of book that a grown-up will curl up with herself (see Becky's review), but it is one my 8-year old son asked me or his father to keep on reading all the nights it was his bedtime book.

This is the last book Philippa Pearce (author of Tom's Midnight Garden) wrote before she died in 2006. She wrote it for her own two grandchildren, and the illustrator, Helen Craig (of Angelina Ballerina fame), is their other grandmother.

The latest on lead in books

Here's the latest AP article about lead and libraries...

But what are used book stores doing?

Silent Echoes for Timeslip Tuesday

Intrigued by the description of this book over at Book Moot, I sought out Silent Echoes, by Carla Jablonski (Razorbill, 2007, 344pp) for this week's Timeslip Tuesday book.

In late 19th-century New York, sixteen-year old Lucy and her father make their living through Spiritualism, with Lucy playing the role of the medium. It is not much of a living, but preying on the rich and gullible keeps them from poverty, and Lucy has the patter down pat.

"She shut her eyes and went back into her trance routine. She threw in a few moans to cover the rumbling of her empty stomach.

"Is anyone there who wold like to make contact?" she called out. "Spirits! Speak to me!"

"Help me," a voice replied.

Lucy sat bolt upright in her chair, her skin suddenly cold with shock.

"Help me," the voice repeated. A voice not her own. A girl's voice, a voice that didn't belong to anyone in the room. "Why won't anyone help me?"

At first, it is this "spirit" who helps Lucy. Lucy's predictions, based on the knowledge of the future that it shares with her, bring in more money than she and her father have ever made before, and the attentions of a rich, young man...

Gradually, Lucy begins to understand that this voice is not a ghostly spirit. Somehow, she has heard Lindsay, a modern New York girl, desperate for help. Her alcoholic mother and violent step-father are making Lindsay's life intolerable, and things are about to get worse for her. Although contact with Lindsay has improved Lucy's life, hearing voices lands Lindsay a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

When the girls realize that they have forged a bond across time, Lucy in the past begins to see what she must do to help Lindsay, while learning how best to live her own life.

Timeslip-wise, there was one thing I found strange. The girls are able to hear each other when they are in the same physical place, which is fine. But then newspapers from the present slip backwards into the past, inexplicably...

I found Lindsay's life in the present--her problems, her actions with regard to Lucy--fascinating. Lucy's side of things I found less believable, as she didn't seem to know all that much about life in her own time and place. Lucy was made even less convincing at times when the author seemed to use her as an audience for instructional digressions into life for poor women in the nineteenth-century. I don't mind in the least historical fiction that instructs, but it is tricky, I think, to slip the instruction in so subtly that it does not distract.

Still, an enjoyable read.

This is my 21st Timeslip Tuesday review! I'm happy to link to any other timeslip reviews, so let me know...

What Darwin Saw: the Journey that Changed the World

In the past few weeks, I have had the very great pleasure of reading What Darwin Saw: The Journey That Changed the World, by Rosalyn Schanzer (Smithsonian: 2009, ages 8-adult). First I read it out loud to my boys, and then again to myself. I had the great pleasure of watching my eight-year old poring over it repeatedly, and finally, I've read it a third time today. I do not remember ever being so very impressed by a non-fiction picture book in my life (I am pretty sure I mean this).

What Darwin Saw tells how young Darwin travelled around the world in the 1830s, and the strange, wonderful, and sometimes scary things he saw. It takes him home to England, where he spent the rest of his life creating a new theory of how life on earth has changed over the millenia. The book is part narration by the author, part snippets from Darwin's journals and letters, and part notes of explanation.

Maybe I loved this book so much because of the beautiful illustrations. This is a non-fiction picture book of the best kind, where what is shown is both compliment to and continuation of the words. From full-paged panoramic landscapes to close up scientific details, Schanzer has given us a huge variety of enchanting pictures to pore over and delight in (click here to see one of the most beautiful).

Maybe it was the story-line. The adventurous journey around the world, the strange things seen, the marvels that Darwin witnessed, told in large part through his own words: "We climbed up to rough mass of greenstone which crowns the summit of Bell Mountain. this rock was shattered into huge angular fragments, some appearing as if broken the day before, whilst on others, lichens had long grown. I so fully believed that this was owing to frequent earthquakes that I felt inclined to hurry from each loose pile" (page 21).

Maybe it was because Darwin makes a surprisingly great hero. Adventurous and curious, his delight in what he sees is profound. Thoughtful and determined, he is a great role model for the young (and for the rest of us too) when he comes back to England, carefully piecing together the clues on which he will build his scientific edifice (I can imagine holding him up as an example to my children when they rush through their own homework. I can imagine this having no effect....)

And I know that I loved the clear prose with which Schanzer narrates and explains Darwin's voyage and his theories about evolution. Simple enough so that an eight year old can follow, complex enough so that the adult reader does not feel patronized.

But I think that the biggest reason why I was so enraptured is that this book is a celebration of all the wonderful forms of life with which we share our planet. In Darwin's words, quoted by Schanzer, "From so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."


Schanzer, incidentally, deals with the 19th-century conflict between those who accepted evolution with those who could not reconcile the words of the Bible and Darwin's theory. She does not touch on the debates that are still on-going.

Here's a link to Schanzer talking about the evolution of her book, at I.N.K. (Interesting Non-fiction for Kids, which is a great blog).

Here's another review at Muddy Puddle Musings. I was surprised I didn't find, in the five minutes or so I had on hand to spend link-looking any other reviews, any more that were more substantial than mentions....if you reviewed this, let me know and I'll add the link!

This is my contribution to today's Non-Fiction Monday; the roundup is being hosted today by L.L. Owens.

The Dolphin Crossing, thoughts on endings and the Toothfairy, and other YA Dunkirk books

The Dolphin Crossing, by Jill Paton Walsh (first published in 1967, 134 pages).

It is the spring of 1940. The British army are in France, trying to hold back the German advance. In a small village in the east of England, two teenage boys--one from a family of land owning locals, one an evacuee from London--are making friends. Pat and his stepmother, who is expecting a baby any day, had not been given a kindly welcome when they arrived from London. Instead, they had been grudgingly given the shelter of a derelict railway carriage, surrounded by cows. John, lonely, compassionate, and a bit bored, decides that his family's unused barn would make a better place to live. Working together to make the barn habitable, the boys are glad to have something productive to do while the worry of the war drags on.

But one day, they see a line of little boats heading out to sea, toward France, and they hear the story of the British army trapped on the beaches across the channel. So John and Pat, who had never even seen the sea before he left London, set out in John's little boat, Dolphin, on the same night that Pat's sister is being born. They are determined to save as many men as they can, and for the next few days they mechanically ferry boat load after boat load of men from the beach to the offshore naval vessels. Boats next to theirs are blown up, and machine gun fire from the Germans rakes across their bow. Still they keep going, back and forth, and still there are men on the beach, waiting (and I, at this point, am sniffing a bit--Dunkirk always makes me sniff).

So much of what I know of history I learned from historical fiction, and I eagerly recommend The Dolphin Crossing to anyone who wants to learn more about the early days of World War II in England, and what happened at Dunkirk. It's also, pure and simple, a really good book. Enough characterization for those of us who like that, and enough nail biting adventure for those that like that. It is short enough so as not to be daunting, but packs a punch. I think, however, that the ending stinks and that authors who do this to their readers are not nice.

spoiler, and some talk in general of what I look for in an ending, moving on to the Tooth Fairy.

At the end, John and Pat have had to go back to England because they are running out of gas. They make it home safely, although John has been hit by gunfire, and unload their boat load of soldiers into John's kitchen. And then, after a few days in bed recovering, John learns that Pat refueled the Dolphin and took her back to France, and hasn't shown up again. And that's it. Argh. I would rather know for a fact he was dead, than have it hinted at by the author, who knows I will never find out. Imagining your own endings is not the same as having them told you by the One who Knows. When I try to imagine Pat alive somewhere down the coast, having by some miracle brought the Dolphin back safely, or perhaps picked up by another boat after he sinks the Dolphin, I feel like a kid trying to believe in the tooth fairy. This is one reason I like Tolkien, who went to great pains to make sure we know what happened to everyone at the end of The Lord of the Rings.

Jill Paton Walsh is, of course, still very much alive and still writing books, but for grownups these days, so I doubt very much that she will ever save poor Pat from his fictional limbo of presumed death.

And speaking of the Tooth Fairy, it is a very good thing that we never tried very hard to get our children to believe in it. My poor little one lost a second tooth last night, in violent and bloody circumstances (it was loose, but not quite ripe, when he received a whap in the face from his older brother). So he was promised that the Tooth Fairy would bring extra money on account of the blood. Sigh. For the second time in his life, the Tooth Fairy completely failed to remember to put anything at all under his pillow.... Bad Tooth Fairy.

The Dolphin Summer might be a bit hard to find here in the US. I am not bothering to link to the US Amazon page because it says that it is a book for babies with no copies available. However, if your library, like mine, still has its books from the 1960s (which I think is a good thing) you might be in luck (anyone in Rhode Island can get it through interlibrary loan!). There are, however, many cheap used copies available in paperback in Britain, here at Amazon UK you can buy it for two cents (plus postage).

Other Dunkirk Books:

Another excellent book about an evacuee (a teenaged girl, this time) who heads off to Dunkirk is In Spite of All Terror by Hester Burton. There is also Paul Gallico's lovely and tear-inducing The Snow Goose. And if anyone happens to have a spare copy of Dunkirk Summer, by Philip Turner, which I have never read, I would be happy to take it off your hands! It has been on my Christmas Wants List for years now, and since there are no copies available ever it probably will stay there (right alongside Words and Music, by William Mayne). For more on the unavailability of Dunkirk Summer here's a 2002 article in Collecting Books and Magazines. Of course, anyone who has a spare copy who reads that article will become strangely reluctant to send it off to a stranger...

Here's how the article describes the book:

This is perhaps the best book of the nine. It's the story of a community awakening to the full horrors of the war and of young man and a young woman realising for the first time the full possibilities of their love. For a long time, like Andy Birch, the hero, the reader comes to Darnley Mills as a stranger once more. Then the charm of the familiar places, especially All Saints Church and its rectory, and some of our old favourite characters begins to exert itself. Twenty years later it is the world that will be inherited by David, Peter and Arthur but only if the community survives Hitler and his bombs. No longer a boy, not quite a man, seventeen year old Andy faces up to his future.

Sigh. I want it.

Crystal of Discord, my very own fantasy novel (kind of)

Here it is! I randomly generated it as best I could...I am a bit disappointed with my cover art, which has nothing crystalline about it at all. Nor was it easy to find a place to put the title. Poor planning, if you ask me.


Want to create your own Fantasy Epic? Head over here, to 100 Scope Notes, to see how, and to admire other people's books...

Guest, by Rabindranath Tagore, for Poetry Friday

Guest, by Rabindranath Tagore

Lady, you have filled these exile days of mine
With sweetness, made a foreign traveler your own
As easily as these unfamiliar stars, quietly,
Coolly smiling from heaven, have likewise given me
Welcome. When I stood at this window and stared
At the southern sky, a message seemed to slide
Into my soul from the harmony of the stars,
A solemn music that said, "We know you are ours-
Guest of our light from the day you passed
From darkness into the world, always our guest."

Lady, your kindness is a star, the same solemn tune
In your glance seems to say, "I know you are mine."
I do not know your language, but I hear your melody:
"Poet, guest of my love, my guest eternally."

From Selected Poems, Translated by William Radice (Penguin Classics, 2005)

I haven't been a Poetry Friday contributor for a while, but this poem seemed to me so lovely a place to dream of, like a good book, that I couldn't resist.

(But here is the dark truth behind my choice of this lovely poem-- I have placed myself in the hands of the poetry gods. Every Friday I have been typing "random poem" into google and this is the first one I have fallen for....)

The Poetry Friday roundup this week is at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Blackbringer, by Laini Taylor

Faeries of Dreamdark: Blackbringer, by Laini Taylor (Putnam, 2007, 437 pp)

Way back in 2007, I noticed that a lot of people were saying, with great conviction, that Blackbringer was a very good book indeed (see below for specifics). But I was doubtful. There was this fairy-type person on the cover... Even though she looked fierce, and not twee at all, I was cynically unsure about the book.

Fast forward to fall, 2008. There I was on a Cybils panel with Laini, and while emailing and chatting and reading her blog, I came to realize that someone as smart and fun as she is would easily have been capable of writing as good a book as people said she did. Of course, by the time that realization came, I had a reading list of 160ish books on my hands, so Blackbringer had to wait.

Fast forward to yesterday. I finished Blackbringer, excitedly rushing toward the end, while regretting that the end was nigh. I loved it.

Just in case there is anyone reading this who hasn't read any of the many glowing reviews out there already, Blackbringer tells of an ancient evil being, released from his prison through human folly. Standing against him is a young fairy, Magpie Windwitch, and a group of rambunctiously stalwart crows. Magpie is a great heroine, smart and sassy and caring and interested in life. Sure, she has Wondrous Gifts and a Special Destiny, but these are mere accessories to the vivid person that she is. The crows are funny, teetering on the edge of farce but holding their own on this side of it. The ancient evil is an archetypal mythical awfulness, who manages to avoid being a cliche. And there are a host of other characters, filling out the story beautifully and making this world real.

I'm pretty sure Laini enjoyed tremendously the creation of her world and its people, because this the result is one of the most three-dimensional, lived-in, and cared about places I've been for ages. I felt small, Magpie-sized, while reading it, but I don't remember being told to feel this way. I'm so very glad I didn't read it back in 2007 because now I have a lot less time to wait before the sequel, Silksinger, comes out this fall! (edited to add: here's what I thought about Silksinger)

Because of knowing and liking the author, I was determined to read the book Critically, not allowing emotion to sway intellect. And indeed, there was one word that I thought might have been ill-chosen. That word is "pink." It can be found on page 115.

Blackbringer comes out in paperback (shown below) this May! It's interesting that they are now calling the series just Dreamdark, instead of Fairies of...Since I'm still a fairy sceptic, even though I loved Magpie, I find it more appealing!


There have been tons of blog reviews of Blackbringer; Laini has a comprehensive list at her place. The first I read was at Fuse #8, the most recent was from another of our Cybils panel, Em. I think Em and I would both have shortlisted Laini's book in a second! What were the 2007 people thinking????

And finally, here's a link to Shannon Hale and Laini talking to each other.

(nb: I have labeled this middle grade and YA, not because there is anything edgy, but because this is one that YA people would like too. If I had "adult" as a labeling choice, I'd add that too).

A home decorating idea for those who feel that they don't have enough books...

This (the book part, not the cat and the stair railing) is wallpaper. Perfect for all those parts of your house (the ceiling? The sloping walls of the upstairs bedrooms?) where it is impossible to put actual books.

And now the People of Ireland have also spoken...

Well, actually a panel of judges for Children's Books Ireland spoke. And they announced the shortlist for the Bistro Children's Book of the Year (as I learned over at Kid's Lit). I'm especially pleased that one of our Cybils shortlisted books made the cut--Airman, by Eoin Colfer, which is a lovely adventure story that I really do mean to review some day, and I did, after all, like it enough to help shortlist it myself. Incidentally, this is the only fantasy book on the list...Creature of the Night, by Kate Thompson, sounds like gritty urban fantasy but isn't.

The Children of Britain have spoken: the WHSmith Children's book of the year shortlist!

So over in the UK these two people named Richard and Judy, who seem to make their living (in part) by telling the Plain People of Britain what to read, picked their twenty favorite children's books. They then asked the Children of Britain to vote on their favorites, resulting in----

The WHSmith Children's Book of the Year Short List:

Dinosaurs Love Underpants by Claire Freedman, illus Ben Cort (Simon & Schuster)
Horrid Henry Robs the Bank by Francesca Simon (Orion Children's Books)
Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People by Dav Pilkey (Scholastic)
Artemis Fowl & the Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer (Puffin)
The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling (Bloomsbury)
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (Atom)

Well. I guess this is what happens when you let the children vote. I like Captain Underpants just as much as the next mother, but jeez. (I wanted to see what I would have voted for, so I looked on line for the list of the twenty books they started with, but with no luck). It is rather interesting, in an unsurprising way, that the majority are fantasy. I also wonder if this is the first short list ever in the whole history of book awards to include two books with "underpants" in their titles.

But only one of these books will be the final winner! If you are a child (it seems to be open to "all children") here is where you can go to vote for your favorite from this list, by the 27th of March.

I do not know which book I would vote for. Maybe because I've only read two of them.

Jessamy, for Timeslip Tuesday

Today's Timeslip Tuesday book is Jessamy, by Barbara Sleigh (1967, 246 pages of large type, middle grade). Peter shared a touching story about this book over at his blog, Collecting Children's Books, this past Sunday, and since I am lucky enough to have a copy, it seemed like a good time to feature it here (especially since it is one of my favorite timeslip stories).

Jessamy's lonely life is spent being shunted between two aunts, one in school time, one for vacations. Neither particularly wants her. So when Aunt Maggie, the vacation aunt, breaks the news to her that her own children have whooping cough, and that Jessamy will have to stay elsewhere, she is not particularly disappointed. Especially when the elsewhere turns out to be an old house, empty except for a caretaker and the memories the house still holds of the children who once lived there. While exploring the house, Jessamy's attention is caught by a tall cupboard in the old nursery. Opening the door, she finds the measuring marks of those children, with their names written next to them. And one of the names is her own.

That night, Jessamy can't sleep for wondering if she really saw her own name. Quietly she goes back upstairs, opens the cupboard...and finds that she has gone back in time, to 1914, and that she has just fallen from a tree, hurting her head badly (nicely smoothing out for her the difficulties concomitant with time travel). Here she has another aunt, the newly hired cook, who (for a change) is an aunt who loves her, and, in an equally pleasant turn of events, she has the companionship of the children of the house. It is for the most part a happy house. It is true, Fanny, the girl closest to Jessamy's own age, resents the intrusion of the cook's niece, but Kit, the youngest boy, soon becomes her close friend. For Jessamy, lonely no longer, the past seems like an awfully nice place to be.

Except for one thing. 1914, as Jessamy realizes, is not the best year to visit to the past. World War I has started, Harry, the eldest son of the house has left school to enlist, quarreling with his grandfather and storming off in the night, seemingly taking with him his grandfather's precious medieval book of hours. Jessamy, living in both the upstairs world of the family and the downstairs world of the staff, may be the only one able to solve the mystery and clear Harry's name.

Before she can do this, the cupboard sends her forward in time again. But her time in the present is made magical by her knowledge of the house's past, and free from Aunt Maggie's ideas of "suitable playmates," Jessamy befriends a boy who shares his name with a man she had met in the past.

And one day, the cupboard sends her back again. A year has past, and the mystery is still unsolved...and Harry's grandfather still will not allow his name to be spoken.

If I keep on writing, it will get spoilerish, so I shall stop now. But in case anyone is wondering, Jessamy solves the mystery and ends up in her own time, with a happy ending.

Peter referred to this as a "lesser known children's book", but over in the UK it is still rather well known and loved, especially by those who read it back in the 1960s and 70s, when they were children. Partly this is because it is so easy to empathize with likable, lonely Jessamy, partly because Sleigh does a marvellous job bringing the house and its family to life, and partly because the story is magical enough to fascinate, without being so complex as to befuddle. This is the sort of book that a certain type of 10 or 11 year old girl (who values character over action, who is imaginative and introspective) will find incredibly satisfying.

Sadly, it is not readily available anymore, because it's been out of print for a while. It's selling on Amazon for around $50, although there are slightly cheaper copies at Amazon UK (fifteen pounds). But lots of American libraries bought it in the late 1960s, so it might still be lingering in the obscure branches that haven't purged their collections much...It is worth looking for.

ps. Sorry for the small size of the picture. It is not a dog in a pink dress. It is a kneeling girl. But I wanted to show an edition other than the one at Peter's site. The edition I have is an even more miserable cover than either of these, being mostly puce. If I get around to it, I'll scan it, since it's nowhere to be found on line.

Ocean Hide and Seek for Nonfiction Monday

Ocean Hide and Seek, by Jennifer Evans Kramer, illustrated by Gary R. Phillips (Sylvan Dell, 2009).

Imagine a book about sea creatures that, on the one hand, is a soothing sea creature book to read at bedtime, and which, on the other hand, serves as a springboard to discussions not just of the creatures but of the poetic subtleties of language. Such a book is this one.


With each beautifully illustrated pair of pages featuring a rhyming, repetitive verse about a single sea creature, this book appears at first a peaceful introduction to the ways in which ocean animals hide themselves:

"Clownfish colors, orange and white-
orange and white, orange and white.
Seeking shelter, taking flight,
clownfish hiding in plain sight."

This is the good-for-bed-time-reading side of this book.

But other verses are more challenging. Here's the octopus:

"Clever arms that dip and sway-
dip and sway, dip and sway.
Like deadly sea snakes seeking prey,
predators soon swim away."

Not so bed-timish, but a good springboard for discussion about what a predator is (although kids today seem to know this by the time they're three), and also about similes--which the grown-up might need to explain.

The grown-up planning to read this book aloud would be advised to read the pages at the end first. Here, in very straightforward prose, the ways in which the various creatures hide in the sea are explained. Even for an educated adult, this book has challenging bits on first read--it helps, for instance, to know in advance from reading the back that some parrotfish "make a clear, mucus "sleeping bag" cocoon at night." Otherwise, when the fish is described as "a queen in her cocoon," everyone is at sea (pun intended)

Speaking from experience with the various children I've tried this book on (four of them), older kids might not care for the repetitive poetry, and younger kids might be baffled by the poetic descriptions. There's not much one can do about the former, but I think that if the adult reader and the child have the patience to talk about the book in depth (this pun just happened) as they read it the first time through, they will learn a lot, and the book might well become a welcomed bed-time story on subsequent reads.

The Non-fiction Monday Roundup is at Lori Calabrese Writes!

Hidden Voices, by Pat Lowery Collins

Hidden Voices: The Orphan Musicians of Venice, by Pat Lowery Collins (Candlewick, 2009, 352pp, YA).

This book arose from a snippet Collins chanced to hear on her local classical music station--that Vivaldi wrote countless concertos to be played by orphaned girls of Venice, giving the lucky ones a pathway to careers in music, or to rich husbands. From this fact, Collins built a fictional story of three of these orphans, brought up the Ospedale della Pieta, a home for abandoned female orphans. Not only were the girls well carred for, but any who showed any glimmer of musical aptitude had instruments put into their hands from the moment they could hold them.

Three first-person stories are told in this book--the stories of Rosalba, Anetta, and Luisa, age-mates at the brink of adulthood. Despite the sheltered privilege of their lives, and the genuine pleasure that music gives them, each one yearns for more than the orphanage can give. One, a beautiful oboist, craves Romance, pining over a handsome young man glimpsed from the orphanage window. One, gifted with an extraordinarily lovely voice, longs for the mother who abandoned her long ago. The mother, now a nobleman's courtesan, tempts her with dreams of a shared life, if she can become a famous opera singer. The third, a dedicated viola player, longs with sad persistance for the second girl to return the deep love she offers.

Reality breaks in, and the dreams of the three girls shatter, one suddenly and horribly, two more slowly. And all the while, Vivaldi--kind, distracted, asthmatic--writes beautiful music for them to play, for the privileged folk of Venice to hear.

Collins does a pretty good job, I think, making her girls real people set within the context of their own time (except I wonder, a bit, that religion is so little at the forefront of their minds, brought up, as they were, within a religious institution), and she does an excellent job making each girl a distinct personality (she does a nice job with Vivaldi too!). My only real quarrel with the book is one of style (but since I was reading the ARC, I don't know quite how the final version will read). For the most part, Collins eschews contractions, and so the prose felt a tad heavy and slow at times, especially for first-person narration. Contractions that do suddenly appear are a tad jarring by contrast. Once I had accepted this, however, I had no trouble becoming interested in three intertwined stories.

This is a book I would heartily recommend for the following categories of reader:

--those who love Vivaldi in particular, or baroque music, who will appreciate the knowledge Collins brings to bear on the subject
--anyone interested in the history of women in music
--those who were or are dedicated young musicians, like the girls in the book
--those who love stories of girls in confined settings (such as boarding schools and convents)
--those who love historical fiction where the characters are central, and history is writ small (no kings or queens or epic wars etc.)
--and finally, those who love Venice. Even though seen, for the most part, through the windows of the orphanage, Venice is at the heart of the story.

At Journey of a Bookseller there's another review of Hidden Voices, and an ARC being given away (I guess it's still open, cause it doesn't say it isn't). I won't be offering mine here, because I already have a friend who meets three of the above criteria in mind for it.

As an added bonus, I am infinitely more interested in Vivaldi's music than I was last month, now that I know so much more of the circumstances in which it was born. Anyone looking for a very fine present to give could combine this book very nicely with a Vivaldi cd--I myself wish I had something besides The Four Seasons on hand, and in my mind, for that matter!

Hidden Voices will be released May 12, 2009.

Kin (The Good Neighbors Book 1), by Holly Black and Ted Naifeh

Kin (The Good Neighbors, Book 1), a graphic novel by Holly Black and Ted Naifeh (Graphix 2008, p 117, YA).

Here's a graphic novel that combines urban fairies, a suspenseful mystery, and dark family secrets with dark and brooding drawings. It was a finalist for the Cybils Awards in the YA Graphic Novel category, recommendation enough to tempt even a non-graphic novel reader such as myself (so what follows is reaction rather than review).

Rue's life has imploded. Her mother has been gone for three weeks, and now her father is in jail, a suspect in both the mother's disappearance and in the murder of one of his college students. On top of that, she has begun to see things--strange things. Fairy things, but, this being Holly Black of Tithe fame, these are not Flower Fairies at the bottom of the garden. Quite the opposite. And one of the most un-Flower-Fairy-like of these creatures is claiming to be her missing mother's father, and is challenging Rue to embrace the non-human side of her own nature. The human/fairy city that Rue now inhabits is dissolving into chaos too, with impossible vines engulfing its buildings. Rue is faced with the mother (pun intended) of all identity crises. In her own words: "A lot of kids have this fantasy that secretly they're really the princess of a foreign country. Turns out that pretty much sucks" (p. 79).

The graphic novel formal works well for Rue's story. Sharing Rue's visual field, the reader begins to see the strange fantastic others without knowing who they are and what they mean, coming face to face with strange and scary things along with her. And because the story is broken up into frames (it is, after all, a graphic novel), which feels like a very jumpy way of story-telling to me, I felt that I shared Rue's confusion and lack of a coherent reality in a very immediate, empathetically engaged way. This is not by any means a suggestion that Black is not telling a coherent story--she is, and I thought it was an interesting one, although not wildly original. However, I think my confusion was in large part my own problem rather than an extension of Rue's, perhaps because I have too a hard time taking my eyes off the words to read any graphic novel easily. But it was a feeling that seemed to suit the story.

Just out of curiosity--do any other really fast readers out there have terrible trouble reading slowly enough to look at the pictures in graphic novels? I get so caught up in reading the story that I forget that the pictures are telling the story too. So I end up confused. I am also uncertain about what makes the illustrations of a graphic novel Good, because, like I said, I have trouble stopping to look at them. In this case, they are pretty dark, literally, so it required even more work to see what the heck was happening than is necessary for, say, Jellaby, the one graphic novel that I truly love*. I am never going to raise my hand to be on the Cybils graphic novel panel.

My conclusion--I didn't mind reading it at all, and it is easy to imagine lots of urban-fairy-book-loving people who will love it. I'll probably read the second book, but I'm not panting to. Maybe I should practice first. Perhaps one graphic novel a month, building up to one a week...

Writer Zack Smith has a great interview with Holly Black where they chat about how this book came to be, and at Tor there's a fascinating look at the 19th-century murder of a suspected changeling that inspired Black.

Other reviews and comments can be found at:

The Excelsior File
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Mrs. Hill's Book Blog
Gail Gauthier's Original Content
Read About Comics

and many more places. It's a fascinatingly mixed bag...

ps: here's something I hate that seems to be prevalent in the graphic novel genre. It is really hard to tell what is the title of the book and what is the title of the series. I think the book title should be bigger than the series title. I could have sworn I was reading a book called The Good Neighbors, first in a series called Kin. Hmph. But is that pathetically last year/decade/century of me?

*and speaking of Jellaby (which was also a Cybils finalist), Jellaby: Monster in the City is coming out April 21st...