Carpe Diem, by Autumn Cornwell

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

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

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

And nobody dies.

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

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

Reading YA for the Cybills

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

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

Win a basket of books over at A Readable Feast

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

Owly #4 -- A Time To Be Brave

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

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

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

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

A poetry parlour game

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

Here's an example, with the answer:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1443534
3542442
54415
3131353


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


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

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

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

Another Kind of Cowboy

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

Waterstone's Childrens book prize short list

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

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

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

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

Here's the full article.

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

From Toddler Story Time to the YA Section

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

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

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

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

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

Say Hola to Spanish, Otra Vez (Again!)

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

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

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

Any other recommendations for Spanish instructional type books?

Outside the Box, by Dan Allosso

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Cybils--YA Books, plus Holiday Mugs

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

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

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

New Carnival Up!

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

Itty and Bitty -- Rose Mary Berlin

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

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

Upcoming Carnival!

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

Peak, by Roland Smith

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

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

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

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

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

For Poetry Friday: Epistle to be Left on Earth

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

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

Epistle To Be Left In The Earth

by Archibald MacLeish

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

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

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

Voices are crying an unknown name in the sky

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

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

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

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

Kiss & Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ballet Shoes on television -- 1975 and 2007

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

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

Adults across the pond revisiting children's books

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

Robert's Snow-- Time to bid!

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

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

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