This week's round-up of middle grade science fiction and fantasy from around the blogs (5/25/14)

Greetings from cold, grey Rhode Island.  No beach fun for us today, staying inside and reading is much more appealing!

 Here are the results of this week's blog gleaning--please let me know if I missed your post!

The Reviews:

The Ash Mistry adventures--The Savage Fortress, and The City of Death, by Sarwat Chadda, at proseandkahn

The Boy at the End of the World, by Greg Van Eekhout, at Akossiwa Ketoglo

The Boys of Blur, by N.D. Wilson, at books4yourkids 

The Castle Behind Thorns, by Merrie Haskell, at Random Musings of a Bibliophile 

The Children of the King, by Sonya Hartnett, at Becky's Book Reviews

Deadly Pink, by Vivian Vande Velde, at Leaf's Reviews

The Demon Notebook, by Erika McGann, at Mom Read It

The Inventor's Secret, by Andrea Cremer, at Book Nut

Jinx's Magic, by Sage Blackwood, at Semicolon

London Calling, by Edward Bloor, at Time Travel Times Two

The Mark of the Dragonfly, by Jaleigh Johnson, at Akossiwa Ketoglo

The Night Gardener, by Jonathan Auxier, at thebookshelfgargoyle, books4yourkids, and The Write Path

Noah Zarc: Mammoth Trouble, by D. Robert Pease, at SW Lothian

Northwood, by Brian Faulkner, at Librarian of Snark 

Oddfellow's Orphanage, by Emily Winfield Martin, at books4yourkids

The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate, at Laurisa White Reyes 

The One Safe Place, by Tania Unsworth, at Charlotte's Library

A Question of Magic, by E.D. Baker, at Pages Unbound 

Ripple Effect, by Timothy J. Bradley, at Views From the Tesseract

Rump, by Liesl Shurtliff, at books4yourkids

Saving Lucas Biggs, by Marisa de los Santos and David Teague, at Charlotte's Library

The School for Good and Evil, by Soman Chainani, at Ciao Bella

The Screaming Staircase, by Jonathan Stroud, at alibrarymama

Small Medium at Large, by Joanne Levy, at Madigan Reads

The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo, at Views From the Tesseract

The Spindlers, by Lauren Oliver, at books4yourkids 

The Spirit Animal series, by varoius authors, at proseandkahn

Splendors and Glooms, by Laura Amy Schlitz, at books4yourkids

Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet, by Eleanor Cameron, at Tor

The Thickety: a Path Beings, by J.A. White, at Charlotte's Library

The Unicorn Thief, by R.R. Russell, at Sharon the Librarian

Zoe and Zak and the Tiger Temple, by Lars Guignard, at DJ's Book Corner (audiobook review)

Zombie Baseball Beatdown, by Paulo Bacigalupi, at Bookshelves of Doom 


Authors and Interviews

S.E. Grove (The Glass Sentence) at Shelf Talker

Jennifer Nielsen (The Ascendance Trilogy) at Guys Lit Wire

Jaleigh Johnson (The Mark of the Dragonfly) at The Hiding Spot

Jacqueline West (The Books of Elsewhere) at Literary Rambles and The Book Cellar

Jonathan Auxier (The Night Gardener) at Nerdy Book Club

Laurisa White Reyes (The Celestine Chronicles) at Carpinello's Writing  Pages


Other Good Stuff

A feast of spring MG sci fi/fantasy covers at The Enchanted Inkpot

Exciting Tolkien news--"lost" live speech to be released

I hope all of you who are going to Book Expo America have a lovely time!  I myself am staying home and looking forward to Armchair BEA!  It begins tomorrow, so it's not too late to join in the fun from the comfort of your own home!

For those who are house-hunting- the childhood home of Philipa Pearce, four miles outside Cambridge, is for sale; she used its garden as the setting for Tom's Midnight Garden.  (Given the current owners' taste in interior decoration, it's not at all clear to me why they bought this lovely old house in the first place!).

The One Safe Place, by Tania Unsworth

The One Safe Place, by Tania Unsworth  (Algonquin Young Readers, middle grade, April 29, 2014)

Climate change has brought North America to the brink of collapse.   But shielded from the merciless sun in a remote valley, Devin and his grandfather have managed to keep a peaceful life going.  Then Devin's grandfather dies.  When the work of their farm proves too much for him, Devin sets out to find what's left of civilization.  In a wreck of a city where feral children run wild (but the rich can still afford the water to keep their lawns green) Devin is taken under the wing of Kit, a girl who's a practiced thief.   But then comes the promise of a refuge for children--a place where they will be safe and cared for--and though Devin has his doubts, he allows himself to be persuaded to enter that mysterious sanctuary.

And indeed, the Gabriel H. Penn Home for Children offers all the food, all the divertissements, and all the other creature comforts a kid might want.  But Gabriel H. Penn did not have the well-being of children in mind when he established the Home.  He was thinking solely of himself....and the rich old clients who might join him in benefiting from the "happy childhood" the Home provides for its young residents.

Devin does not fall for it.  He can't help but be appalled by the zombie-like state the children periodically fall into, and senses there is a dark underside to the whole set-up (and boy is he is right!).   And so he sets about solving the mysteries of the Home, and planning an escape.... On the plus side, Devin has perernatural gifts of memory conferred on him by his profound synesthesia, and he has allies among the kids who have their own abilities.    One the down side, the trap they are in is a pretty tight one, and it will take a whole lot of luck for the ragtag group of kids to escape the "safe place" that is their prison.

"Plucky, quirky kids working together in a fantastical setting to defeat evil adults who are keeping them prisoners" is pretty much always a good plot, as far as I'm concerned, and this one was no exception.   It's fun to see the dark side of the Home slowly becoming clear, and to get to know its young residents as they start to work together to escape.   And I don't think I'm alone in this-- there is lots of kid appeal in this portrayal of  the superficial elements that comprise "happy childhood" being horribly twisted, and the children fighting back, especially when the kids are well-drawn enough to have distinct personalities!  Devin's synesthesia is a particularly engaging aspect of the story.  Fascinating in and of itself, and allowing Unsworth plenty of scope for appealing descriptive language, it is a lot more than just an add-on specialness.  It plays a Pointful role in the plot, which I appreciated lots.

I did feel, though, that the near-future climate horror was not quite as well done as may be-- though it certainly helps set up the paradise of the Home, giving good reasons for the kids to end up there, it felt like a bit of an unnecessary dystopian accessory to the sci-fi premise of what is really happening at the Home. I questioned the premise that there still have been enough left of civilization to support an uber-rich class (though the rich certainly good at surviving), and I wasn't able to accept the kids as believable products of  catastrophic climate change.  They were just a bit too much like kids of today (would Kit, for instance, uneducated street kid that she is, really be familiar with IQ tests?).   I think that young readers won't notice or care, but it kept me personally from truly embracing the story.

Short answer--a good, solid story for the eleven year old or so who enjoys creepy sci fi suspense in which brave, resourceful kids are pitted against evil adults.

And now the part of review writing I always enjoy--going to see what the professional reviews said.

Here's the starred Kirkus review-- "A standout in the genre’s crowded landscape. (Dystopian thriller. 10-16)

Me--what's with that upper age range?  The kids are 12ish, some younger...there's no romance...the violence is muted though disturbing...I'd say 12 or 13, tops.  Any older and you run into readers of YA dystopia who will find this too tame.

No star from Publishers Weekly, but a very positive review-- "a page-turning mix of suspense, intrigue, and anxiety. The kids are genuine and quirky, just the right kind of mismatched misfits to snag readers’ hearts. This is a wholly enjoyable journey, and a dystopian vision with some great new twists."  

Me--not sure my heart ever got snagged, exactly, but I agree with the main points here (though I think "dystopian" has become somewhat overused and cheapened these days).  The major twist is indeed not one I can remember seeing before (though I'm not quite sure about this......).

Another star from School Library Journal-- "The suspense and dread build as the mystery gradually unfolds, but it stops short of becoming truly horrific. The conclusion is fast-paced and gripping." 

Me--nothing to disagree with here (although the spectre of old age trying to siphon off the vitality of the young is perhaps something that will be found truly horrific by those concerned about the collapse of Social Security as the Baby Boomers age...).

Saving Lucas Biggs, by Marisa de los Santos and David Teague, for Timeslip Tuesday

Saving Lucas Biggs, by Marisa de los Santos and David Teague (HarperCollins, middle grade, April 29, 2014), opens with an innocent man being sentenced to death.  Margaret's father was a whistle-blower,  a geologist who publicly decried the fracking that was poisoning the water of Victory.   He was accused of murder and arson, and Judge Biggs, a company man through and through, had no qualms whatsoever condemning him.

Margaret and most everyone else in town knows that the mining company is corrupt and vicious and that Judge Biggs was complicit in the plot to frame her father.   But Judge Biggs wasn't always the hateful corporate toady he became--he was once a good-hearted boy, back in the Victory of 1938,  the year when the miners, driven to desperation by unsafe working conditions and pathetic wages tied to to the company story, took a stand against the company and went on strike, using non-violent protest to press for change.    It didn't work;  two innocent men died, and the life of young Lucas was warped horribly out of true.   But in present day Victory, there's one man, Joshua (the grandfather of Margaret's best friend, Charlie) who remembers Lucas Biggs back before things went wrong.  And Joshua still has faith that his old friend can still be saved.....

The story of Joshua's  life in 1938, alternating with Margaret's in the present, tells of all the suffering of the minors' families, and the heartbreak of how close things got to a peaceful resolution.  Listening to Joshua talk of his old friend, and how he changed,  it becomes clear to Margaret that the only way to save her father is to save Lucas Biggs.

And Margaret thinks she might be able to do this, for her family can time travel.  So she goes back to 1938, and pushes against the weight of  history, as she tries, with young Joshua's help, to keep the innocent from being killed.

Saving Lucas Biggs has memorable characters, an intriguing premise in which details keep getting added to the story back in the past making it kind of like a mystery, and there is tons of truly heart-touching emotion and shoulder-clenching suspense (shoulder-clenching because that's what happens when you read about it). 

The time travelling came some ways into the book, but it was satisfying time travelling--the authors did a fine job of sending her back in time with her mission front and center, and, along with Margaret herself, they refused to get distracted by things irrelevant to the matter at hand.

 In short, I can imagine lots of kids enjoying it lots as an exciting adventure story combining past and present danger.

On the more critical side, the actual manner in which the all is resolved did not strike me as convincing; it was pretty much deus ex machina, and its lack of emotional and narrative heft 

But what I really want to say is Yes! for a book that tackles corporate greed and corruption and puts it in historical context! Yes for a book that uses a kid friendly premise and story to show the atrocities committed by the ruthless companies!  (The atrocities are described--people, just sitting in the tent camp, are gunned down, and are killed and mutilated--but they are described in a factual, un-hysterical way that makes it possible to move through the horror without nightmares).  And Yes for a book that advocates for non-violent resistance inspired by Quakerism!

Maybe it's not, you know, subtle, and the ultimate ease of the ending did kind of disappoint me more than somewhat, but still, how can I not say yes to a book that combines such powerful points with an engaging story?

My response was quite possible colored by the fact that I read this morning (while finishing the book), this piece of news:

"North Carolina legislators are considering a bill that would make it a crime to publicly disclose toxic chemicals that energy companies use in the hydraulic fracturing process, with offenders on the hook for fines or even jail time."  It seems like even medical and emergency personal couldn't talk about the toxic chemicals used in fracking even if they were directly copying with their repercussions.

How can this be?

And continuing with the real world connections--here's a petition to ban fracking in the area of New Mexico's Chaco Culture National Historic Park.

The Thickety: A Path Begins, by J.A. White

The Thickety: A Path Begins, by J.A. White (Katherine Tegen Books, May 6, 2014, upper middle grade/younger YA), is a gripping fantasy full of fascinating magic, but it is a dark one, not for the faint of heart! 

Generations ago, Kara's people had been led by a charismatic leader to an island far from the rest of the world, to live free of the evil taint of magic.   But though the words of the leader were dutifully chanted, and all references to magic shunned, the island was far from being free of it.  For on the boundaries of the settled lands loomed the great, magical, horrible wood known as the Thickety, and only the work of the Clearers--hacking and burning at its fringes (and risking death every day from deadly incursions of its magical creatures and vegetation) keeps it at bay.   And though all on the island are taught that witchcraft is the worst evil, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Kara's own mother was killed for witchcraft when she was five.  For the next seven years, she and her little brother have struggled onward, with no help from her deeply depressed father, and shunned by all the other folk.   Kara, well-indoctrinated, won't admit her mother was a witch.  But she was.

And now the Thickety is calling to Kara....and she crosses its boundary line.   There in the strangeness of its shade she finds a magical book, one that lets her make magic of her own.  But magic comes with a price.  Kara must face supernatural and human enmity, and resist the lure of absolute power, or else join her own mother as a character in the stories of evil witches.  But when magic seems the only way to save her brother's life, and her own, can she keep from letting her wild talents run free?

With momentum that builds from a slowish start to an ever faster turning of page, Kara's journey into magic is fiercely gripping.   And I use "fierce" very much on purpose--this is not a "fun with magic in an enchanted woods" book.   The grim beginning, with shunned, neglected Kara struggling to keep her little brother alive, sets the tone, and Kara's discovery that magic is real is not a joyous release.  Rather, she quickly learns of the terror at the heart of the Thickety, and just as quickly learns that power can be horribly addictive (especially for one who has been powerless and ill-used).  

As the story unfolds, all manner of dark injury, torture, and death become part of it.   There is much to make a sensitive reader flinch, from your basic attack of a swarm of magically-controlled rats to flat-out torture.   The book begins with the terrible death of Kara's mother, which I think is useful for weeding out readers who will be bothered!  I wouldn't recommend this to the younger middle grade reader--as a parent myself, there are images I don't want my 11-year-old to have in his head just yet, though I might well offer it to him next year.   That being said, the grimness is somewhat ameliorated by the fact that Kara never succumbs to the selfish misuse of her power, and stays "good," which keeps things from being too terribly disturbing!

My one quibble with the book is that a lot of physically challenging things happen to Kara (no water for three days, torture, a badly injured leg, etc.), but none of these things seem to hold her back--for instance, at one point, after the three days without water, she and her friend are communicating with hand signals because their mouths are so dry, but then have a long conversation the next paragraph down; at another point her leg is badly hurt, but a few pages later she's perfectly mobile.I think if you make your characters suffer terribly, there should be realistic physical consequences! 

In any event, this is a really truly gripping story, which I read (to the extent my circumstances allow) in a single sitting at a very rapid pace.   If you like dark fantasy with young heroines facing formidable obstacles, you might very well like The Thickety very much indeed.  And boy, does it end with a twist that makes the reader want More Now!

Here's the (starred) Kirkus review; they suggest 11-14 as the readership age,which is just about right, especially if the younger readers have a taste for horror.  And here's the starred Publishers Weekly review (which pushes the age down to 8, making my eyebrows raise).

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.

This week's round-up of middle grade sci fi and fantasy from around the blogs (5/18/14)

 I'm starting this week's round-up with two announcements of things near and dear to me.

First-- The Eight Annual Kidlitcon has been announced!  If there is any way you can make it, I urge you to come--it is so lovely to be surrounded by kindred spirits talking books and blogs.   I am going- I found a good deal on my outward bound ticket and bought it already, so I hope I find a good return ticket or else I'll have to start life anew in California....

Second--  The Ninth Annual 48 Hour Book Challenge, hosted by MotherReader, has been announced, and this year the focus is on diversity.

Please let me know, as always, if I missed your post! (authors and publicists--you are welcome to let me know of reviews too!)

The Reviews:

Boys of Blur, by N.D. Wilson, at Nerdy Book Club

The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls, by Claire Legrand, at Log Cabin Library

Dealing With Dragons, and Searching for Dragons, by Patricia C. Wrede, at  Reading is Fun Again (audiobook reviews)

Elsbeth and the Pirate's Treasure, by J. Bean Palmer, at Life's Simple Pleasures

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

The Forbidden Library, by Django Wexler, at The Bibliomaniac

The Glass Sentence, by S.E. Grove, at Waking Brain Cells

The Hero's Guide to Being an Outlaw, by Christopher Healy, at Charlotte's Library

The Islands of Chaldea, by Diana Wynne Jones, at The Emerald City Book Review

Millhouse, by Natale Ghent, at In Bed With Books

Mouseheart, by Lisa Fiedler, at Hidden in Pages,  Kid Lit Frenzy (with giveaway), and Charlotte's Library (also giveaway)

The Night Gardener, by Jonathan Auxier, at Random Musings of a Bibliophile

Nightingale's Nest, by Nikki Loftin, at Semicolon

Noah Zarc: Mammoth Trouble, by D. Robert Pease, at Mother Daughter Book Reviews

Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy, by Karen Foxlee, at Good Books and Good Wine (audiobook) and Becky's Book Reviews

The Phoenix and the Carpet, by E. Nesbit, at Becky's Book Reviews

The Riverman, by Aaron Starmer, at Semicolon

Rose and the Lost Princess, by Holly Webb, at Wands and Worlds 

The Runaway King, by Jennifer Nielsen, at Challenging the Bookworm

Saving Lucas Biggs, by Maria de los Santos and David Teague, at Inspiring Insomnia

The Screaming Staircase, by Jonathan Stroud, at I Heart Reading

Sky Raiders, by Brandon Mull, at Hidden In Pages

Taran Wanderer, by Lloyd Alexander, at Hope is the Word 

Tesla's Attic, by Neil Shusterman and Eric Elfman, at Semicolon

The Unicorn Thief, by R.R. Russell, at The Book Monsters  and Nayu's Reading Corner

The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, by Eleanor Cameron, at Tor 

Two super hero books at Ms. Yingling Reads--  Bacon, Lee. The Dominion Key (Joshua Dread #3) and  Jensen, Marion. Almost Super

Author and Interviews

Django Wexler (The Forbidden Library) at Fanboynation

N.D. Wilson (The Boys of Blur) at Nerdy Book Club

Jerry A. White (The Thickety) at Odyssey Workshop

MarcyKate Connolly (Monstrous) at The Book Cellar

Other Good Stuff

Oh my gosh this looks so lovely and it is so timely viz diversity discussions and I want it for my children right now!!!! -- Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa)—"a beautifully illustrated puzzle-adventure game depicting a young Iñupiaq protagonist and her arctic fox companion" created by game designers working with Native storytellers and elders, by a tribally-owned company called Upper One Games. (Found via Once Upon a Blog). 

The Nebula Awards have been announced.  From Tor:

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy

• Winner: Sister Mine, Nalo Hopkinson (Grand Central)
• The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black (Little, Brown; Indigo)
• When We Wake, Karen Healey (Allen & Unwin; Little, Brown)
• The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine)
• Hero, Alethea Kontis (Harcourt)
• September Girls, Bennett Madison (Harper Teen)
• A Corner of White, Jaclyn Moriarty (Levine)

Winged equines, at Views From the Tesseract and Middle Grade Steampunk, at Bookends

Not strictly middle grade, but just a reminder there's a Sci Fi/Fantasy round-up every week at On Starships and Dragon Wings

And also not strictly middle grade, but still of interest--onn Sunday, May 25th at 2pm,  fantasy authors Leah Cypess, Erin Cashman, AC Gaughen, and Adi Rule will be talking about the challenges of creating historical and fantastical settings and sharing their world-building tips at The Writers' Loft in Sherborn, MA. 

"Alice, Creator and Destroyer" (as in Alice In Wonderland), at Seven Miles of Steel Thistles

Rush Limbaugh won the Children's Book Choice Award for author of the year for Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims; here are some reactions rounded-up at 100 Scope Notes
and another look at it at Educating Alice, where Pilgrim alternatives are offered.

 And having gotten that out of the way, let's have  more pictures from Never Alone:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Goodbye, Mary Stewart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

disclaimer:  review copy received from the publisher

Kissing Shakespeare, by Pamela Mingle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the gist of the story:

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

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

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

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

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

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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lisa Fiedler is the author of several novels for children and young adults. She divides her time between Connecticut and the Rhode Island seashore, where she lives happily with her very patient husband, her brilliant and beloved daughter, and their two incredibly spoiled golden retrievers.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Vivienne To has illustrated several books, including The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins and the Randi Rhodes, Ninja Detective series by Octavia Spencer. As a child, she had two pet mice escape. She currently lives in Sydney, Australia, with her partner and her ginger cat. Visit her at VivienneTo.com.

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

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

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

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

In any event.

The Reviews:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Forbidden Library, by Django Wexler, at Bestfantasybooks

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

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

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

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

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

The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge, at Tor

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

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

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

The Peculiar, by Stefan Bachmann, at Librarian of Snark

The Riverman, by Aaron Starmer, at Kid Lit Geek

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

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

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

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

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

Two Rumplestiltskin retelligs at thebookshelfgargoyle



Authors and Interviews

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

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

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

Daniel Nanavati (Midrak Earthshaker) Carpinello's Writing Pages


Other Good Stuff

The finalists for the Locus Awards (chosen by readers of Locus Magazine) have been announced, and here are the Young Adult finalists, which include two that are more Middle Grade:
 
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Zombie Baseball Beatdown, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown) 

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black (Little, Brown; Indigo) 

Homeland, Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; Titan) 

The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine) 

The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, Catherynne M. Valente (Feiwel and Friends)

Zombie Baseball Beatdown, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown) The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black (Little, Brown; Indigo) Homeland, Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; Titan) The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine) The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, Catherynne M. Valente (Feiwel and Friends) - See more at: http://www.locusmag.com/News/2014/05/2014-locus-awards-finalists/#sthash.JBwPc1uv.dpuf

YOUNG ADULT BOOK

• Zombie Baseball Beatdown, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown)
• The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black (Little, Brown; Indigo)
• Homeland, Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; Titan)
• The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine)
• The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, Catherynne M. Valente (Feiwel and Friends)

- See more at: http://www.locusmag.com/News/2014/05/2014-locus-awards-finalists/#sthash.JBwPc1uv.dpuf

YOUNG ADULT BOOK

• Zombie Baseball Beatdown, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown)
• The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black (Little, Brown; Indigo)
• Homeland, Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; Titan)
• The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine)
• The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, Catherynne M. Valente (Feiwel and Friends)

- See more at: http://www.locusmag.com/News/2014/05/2014-locus-awards-finalists/#sthash.JBwPc1uv.dpuf

YOUNG ADULT BOOK

• Zombie Baseball Beatdown, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown)
• The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black (Little, Brown; Indigo)
• Homeland, Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; Titan)
• The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine)
• The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, Catherynne M. Valente (Feiwel and Friends)

- See more at: http://www.locusmag.com/News/2014/05/2014-locus-awards-finalists/#sthash.JBwPc1uv.dpuf

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

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

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

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



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

Sophie, In Shadow, by Eileen Kernaghan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

disclaimer: review copy received from the author

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

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

Whoot!  Thanks, Tanita!

Ancient Fire, by Mark London Williams for Timeslip Tuesday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Return of Zita the Spacegirl, by Ben Hatke

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

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

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

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

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

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


Here's a preview at Tor.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher