Dramarama, by E. Lockhart

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

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

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

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

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

Here's another review, over at Interactive Reader.

Remembering Raquel, by Vivian Vande Velde

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

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

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

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

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

Happy 100th birthday, Astrid Lindgren!

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

"Read what?" they asked, suspiciously.

"This book about Cinderella!"

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

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

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

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

Borderline, by Bonnie Rozanski

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

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

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

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

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

Robert's Snow: Snowasaurus

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



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


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


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

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

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

Going back to High School

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Boy with Two Belly Buttons, by Stephen Dubner

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

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

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

dismay, and a warning, and finally, an answer

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

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

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

Red Glass, by Laura Resau

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

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

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

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

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

Personal Note:

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

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

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

This Week's Edition of Fun with Metaphors

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

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

Red Glass has been nominated for the YA Cybils award.

Blood Brothers

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Link to a report on the Particles of Narrative conference, featuring Megan Whalen Turner

Last weekend, up at the University of Toronto, there was a conference called "Particles of Narrative: Language, Metaphor, and Children's Literature." I really really would have liked to go, mainly because Megan Whalen Turner was giving a talk. But it was impossible. So I was happy to find this account of the conference, with quotes from MWT, here, at Cheryl Rainfield's blog.

If there are fans of MWT out there who don't already know, there is a most active discussion forum about her books here, with lots of detailed discussion about very specific scenes and sentences, along with a touch of frivolous fan chatter.

Ricky Ricotta' s Mighty Robot, a series of books by Dav Pilkey

In my on-going efforts to help my 7 year old make it into the realm of The Reading Public, I have been bravely sitting next to him while he reads Captain Underpants. Blah. So I was thrilled, yes, thrilled, to discover Dav Pilkney's other series. The Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot books don't depend on potty humor! They don't make school look horrible! They don't celebrate jokes that are not nice at all! They are more readable!

And lo, my boy now reads them to himself, silently and with deep concentration.

For anyone out there, who, like me before this morning, didn't know that there are lots of Ricky Ricotta books (I only had heard of 4), here's the Ricky Ricotta webpage over at Scholastic.

Here's the list of titles:
Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot
Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot vs. the Mutant Mosquitos from Mercury
Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot vs. the Voodoo Vultures from Venus
Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot vs. the Mecha Monkeys from Mars
Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot vs. the Jurassic Jackrabbits from Jupiter
Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot vs. the Stupid Stinkbugs from Saturn
Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot vs. the Uranium Unicorns from Uranus
Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot Astro-Activity Book o' Fun
Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot vs. the Naughty Night Crawlers from Neptune (unreleased)
Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot vs. the Unpleasant Penguins from Pluto (unreleased)

By the way, the books started out with a "giant" robot. However, apparently readers pointed out that the robot wasn't really a "giant" --he was just a lot bigger than a mouse. So now the robot is "mighty" instead, and the titles of the first few books were changed.

(Incidentally, this series is also more instructive than Capt. Underpants books--obviously, we learn a bit about the various planets, but perhaps more unusually, the child reader will also develop a familiarity with the names of various cheeses that (s)he might not be familiar with. They are mostly the milder, more child friendly cheeses too. What's not to like about Munster, for instance. And from "Munster" it's an easy step to get out that map of Germany you just happen to have kicking around so as to do a bit of cheese related geography study :) or throw in a bit of Italian language instruction --"ricotta" means "re-cooked"... etc etc and isn't it so much easier to come up with things for other people to do than to do them oneself?)

Ethan, Suspended

Ethan, Suspended by Pamela Ehrenberg (2007, 336 pp, Eerdmans Books for Young Readers).

Ethan is Suspended. From school, from his friends, from his family, from his home town outside Philadelphia. Life as he knows it suddenly comes to an end when he's sent to his grandparents' house in an inner city neighborhood of Washington DC, where they are the only Jewish family left. He thinks it's just for the week of his school suspension, but then his mother just happens to mention while talking to him on the phone that he's there indefinitely.

Now he's the only white Jewish kid at a black/Hispanic junior high. The other kids laugh at him for expecting there to be soap in the soap dispenser, which is the least of his problems. He walks a fine line between getting beaten up, or worse, and making friends. His grandparents mean well, but they eat dinner ridiculously early. They make him take lunches packed in plastic grocery bags. There is no junk food. No computer. How can he stand it? His mother says she cares, but why can't she communicate with him? And his Dad, who just split up with his mom, isn't in touch at all. And there's the disturbing fact that he got suspended from his old school and lost his friends (for reasons discussed in the book). He finds a niche in the school jazz band, makes friends, and at last agrees to watch Jeopardy with his grandparents. When his mom finally says, "You're coming home. I've fixed your play station," he's not sure he wants to exchange the old sagging bed of his dead uncle for his firm mattress at "home."

Within this story line, the author discusses race and class, in the Washington DC of the 1960s as well as in the present. But the book is not overbearingly Message Laden. Ethan, in whose voice the story is told, is conscious of race but not obsessed with it, and the characters as seen through his eyes are people with stories he tries to understand because he cares about them. They are not placemats of varying skin tones and ethnicities. Ethan can afford not to think that race matters, because it doesn't, to him--segregation is over, it's a non-issue. But--"You don't need no laws to keep people out if people can't afford to go there," says Diego.

This book has some great characters, thought-provoking situations, and a glimpse inside an "inner city school" that people like me, living in predominately white suburbs, comfortably reading books, should keep in mind. (ack! now I sound preachy, which the book avoided, but I do think it's true and also, now that I am being personal, I do not not not want my boys to ever have play stations. Nor do they have firm mattresses, but that is their fault because they will jump).

p.s. I read this book because it was nominated in the YA category for the Cybils, but it is not particularly YA-ish. There is one chaste kiss, and a bit of day-dreaming, but nothing to bring a blush to a young girl's/boy's cheek.

p.p.s Reading this book makes me wonder if Jimmy Carter's daughter, Amy, will ever write a memoir about her experiences at a D.C. public school back in the 1970s...I vaguely feel she had a horrible time, but I could be wrong.

Poetry Friday--The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo

I am cheating here a bit today, by not actually sharing a poem, but rather what the author (Rudyard Kipling) calls a "sing-song." It's been going through my head for days, so here are bits from the Just So Story of Old Man Kangaroo and Yellow Dog Dingo.

Kangaroo wants to be "popular and very truly run after," so at the bidding of the Big God Nqong,

"Off ran Dingo-
Yellow-Dog Dingo-
always hungry, grinning like a coal-scuttle,
ran after Kangaroo."

And Kangaroo runs.

"Still ran Dingo-
Yellow-Dog Dingo-
always hungry, grinning like a rat-trap,
never getting nearer, never getting farther,
ran after Kangaroo.

He had too!

Still ran Kangaroo, Old Man Kangaroo.
He ran through the ti-trees; he ran through the mulga;
he ran through the long grass, he ran through the short grass;
he ran through the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer;
he ran till his hind legs ached.

He had too!"

Kipling put many "real" poems into the Just So Stories (1902), but they are nowhere near as good as the poetry that the words of this story make. If you've never read it, do, but not to yourself--read it out loud to someone, or get a copy on tape and listen...My boys (7 and 4) loved these stories, and the words are rather more fun for the grown ups than (to quickly set up a straw man) the Magic Tree House Books as read by their author (said Annie. said Jack. said Annie).

The Poetry Friday Roundup is at Literary Safari today, so head on over for more Fun with Words!

It's still snowing

Thanks to all the people who stopped by here yesterday to see Rose Mary Berlin's snowflake--it was the most visitors ever in one day. And the fun goes on, with lots more snowflakes to visit through the links on the right, including my current favorite snowflake, at Greetings from Nowhere.

Lemonade Mouth

After almost dying with embarrassment alongside one of the characters in the first chapter of Lemonade Mouth, by Mark Peter Hughes (ya 2007, 352 pp), I almost thought I would not be able to read this book. I'm not going to go into details, but I just hope it doesn't happen to my dear boys. But I kept on reading, and basically kept on reading until I was done (despite my dear boys), partly because it was my Duty (see below), but more because it's an engaging, fast paced and ultimately (oh gosh so many words are overused) triumphant? empowering? comforting? story. The author set himself a challenge--take five kids on the periphery of high school, and not only make them into a convincing band (in the music sense), but keep them from becoming stereotypes of the various sub-species of nerdy outsider. He tells their story in first person snips, which is not always my favorite narrative style, but which worked here to keep my interest (but when, I wonder, will I read a ya book that is not in the first person???). Because there are 2 male and 3 female points of view, this book should appeal to both genders.

You can "meet the freaks" at the Lemonade Mouth website here, and yes, that is what their own creator calls them. We meet the five freaks at the beginning of their freshman year. They are kids of varying backgrounds and interests, brought together in detention where the music teacher tells them they are destined for musical greatness (well not exactly, but that's the idea). So they form a band called Lemonade Mouth, become friends, achieve a measure of fame and status, and are a heck of a lot happier at the end than they are at the beginning (which is why it's comforting). It's not the most original plot, but Hughes writes enough into each character to make them interesting people, and each has a distinctive voice. Hormones make their appearance (this is ya after all), but are nicely contained as part of the whole rather than the main point. Sub-plots also add interest--both in the lives of the kids, and when, as a group, they take on a battle against the corporate homogenization of American high schools, and bring back the lemonade machine that Big Soda had muscled out.

When my kids start high school, I'm going to tell them to look on the edges, where the most interesting and intelligent people, like the kids in this book, are likely to be found. And I'm going to encourage them to take action when there are issues they believe in. And if this book is still around (7 more years), I might well leave it around the house for them to find (anticipating that they will not be as amenable to my suggestions as they are now).

A minor note: I like that this book was set in Rhode Island, where I live. And Del's Lemonade is just as much a local fixture as the "Mel's" in the book. It is too sweet for my taste, but the lines are long at the stands in summer.

I read Lemonade Mouth because it was one of around 100 so far that have been nominated for the YA Cybils award. Nominations are still open in all categories.

Skating Penguin

Here is "Skating Penguin," by illustrator Rose Mary Berlin. This is her first snowflake for Robert's Snow--an auction of original snowflake art by children's book illustrators to raise money for cancer research.

Rose Mary Berlin has illustrated more than thirty charming books, including this one about two cute little horses--the eponymous Itty and Bitty. She has been braving the world of horse shows to reach her audience for this one--the kids who are so busy with their horses that they might not have time to go to the bookstore! Rose Mary Berlin is venturing into licensing, and will be an exhibitor at the Surface and Textile Design Show in NYC in May (I definitly think that RMB's penguins would make cute pajamas!), and she will have a line of cards coming out with Legacy Publishing, which should be available online soon at www.shoplegacy.com.

We who blog about children's books have been organdized, as Pooh would say--we are featuring many of this years snowflakes at our various blogs in the coming weeks (this is week 2). Check out the links in the sidebar this weeks presentations. And head on over to the Robert's Snow auction site, look at all the lovely snowflakes, and bid bid bid!

Thank you, Rose Mary Berlin and all the illustrators who have donated their time to creating lovely snowflakes! And thanks to Jules of Seven Impossible Things for her wonderful idea and the effort she put into bringing this Blog Tour of Snowflakes together!

My Monday Snowflake

On Monday I will be featuring the Robert's Snow snowflake of Rose Mary Berlin. It will go up at around 9:30 am, so if you are looking for it and it isn't up yet, please come back!