The Edge of the Forest is up

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

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

I shall now go read it...

The Doofuzz Dudes

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














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

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

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

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

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

So, here's what they are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Words and Pictures" exhibit opening

This Thursday, June 19th, a new exhibit opens at the NeuroDevelopement Center in downtown Providence, RI. With the help of brain wave tracking technology, visitors will see how artwork and stories are conceptualized and how they are an integral part of a child’s brain development.

The exhibit opening looks like a lot of fun--local authors and illustrators Mary Jane Begin, Christopher and Anika Denise, Jill Lamere, Maro Garnsworth, and sculptor Ellen Blomgren will be on hand reading and drawing, and kids will also have a chance to create their own Brain Painting:


I hope they let the grownups do it too, because I want a beautiful picture straight from my very own brain. And not that I'm competitive or anything, but I just sort of want to see if my brain's picture would be the prettiest....

In addition, the NeuroDevelopment Center’s psychologists will be on hand to demonstrate EEG-guided brain-training and discuss its benefits for children with ASD, ADHD and other brain-based difficulties.

Timeslip Tuesday -- London Calling

Welcome to the second edition of Timeslip Tuesday, a day on which I look at books whose characters travel through time, and invite other bloggers to do the same (please leave a link in the comments for me to put in the post!).

Today's book is London Calling, by Edward Bloor (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006, 289pp).

John Martin Conway has spent seventh grade at All Souls Preparatory, New Jersey, in a state of depression. At the school on an employee scholarship (his mom's a secretary), his grades are mediocre, and his only friends two other outcasts. All three live in fear of the school bully, Hank Lowrey IV, whose great grandfather, a general in World War II, left the school a generous endowment. After school ends, he retreats to his basement bedroom, rarely coming out. When his grandmother dies, she leaves him the radio his grandfather had brought home from England in 1941, and Martin begins leaving it on as a nightlight, and its tuner, set between stations, as soothing background noise.

Then the first dream comes.

"A boy--small, thin, dressed in mud-brown clothes--leaned out from behind the radio and whispered, "Johnny, will you help me?"

And so Martin begins a strange life of travelling through time to WW II London, where the blitz is raging and Jimmy's world has become one of deadly chaos. Jimmy can't tell Martin what help he needs--instead, Martin must live through a hellish part of London's past until he sees for himself.

"As I stared down at the street, I expected to find myself transported back to my own bed, in my own time, but that didn't happen. I was still in London, in 1940, in the middle of an air raid, and I had no idea what to do next....

The scene around me was horrifying. The bombers had wreaked massive destruction , and the bombs were continuing to fall. Between the shattering bursts of the explosions, I could hear voices crying out in the dark, in pain and terror."

Trying to figure out if the people and places he sees in the past are real, Martin spends the present doing historical research, that incidentally changes received wisdom about General Lowrey. But to find out what help Jimmy needs, he must keep going back in time, until the pieces of the past fall into place. And then he must travel to England himself to bring news from the past to one who lived through it.

This is classic timesliping at its best. There are no science fiction contrivances, simply the unexplained power of the radio that calls Martin back in time. The mysterious boy from the past with his plea for help leads Martin deeper and deeper into a quest for answers. The clues that Martin learns from his visits to WW II London and his discoveries in the present combine beautifully, and as an added bonus to the story, Martin's quest to help gives him a sense of purpose that draws him out of the basement into better relationships with his family.

There's such a lot going on in this book that I glossed over large bits of it. Here are some other reviews that bring up other points -- at Bewildering Stories, at Blog Critic Magazine, and at Kittenpie Reads Kidlit.

And coincidentally, five hours before I wrote this, Colleen Mondor blogged at Guys Lit Wire about books with strong and heroic boy characters, and included London Calling. Indeed, one of the strengths of this book is Martin's metamorphosis from depressed basement dweller to strong and purposeful hero, who seeks to fulfill his obligation to Jimmy no matter what. The fact that he largely accomplishes this through dogged historical research, as opposed to whacking bad guys, makes the book even more appealing in my eyes.


From other blogs:

Liz from A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy is in with a look at King of Shadows, by Susan Cooper.
Lisa from Under the Covers is in with a new one for me-- Ghost Letters, by Stephen Alter.


From Timeslipe Tuesday 1, here: Don't Know Where, Don't Know When, by Annette Laing, 2007

Hermit Crabs for Nonfiction Monday

If you are looking for a picture book about hermit crabs, probably you will end up with A House for a Hermit Crab, by Eric Carle (Simon and Schuster, 1991). This is a fine book in many ways (I like it, my children like it, people all over the country like it) but as far as science goes, I can't help but thing that Carle has vaguely confused decorator crabs with hermit crabs--the titular crab wanders through a year, gathering both new companions and new living accouterments for his shell. Unlikely behaviour for a hermit crab (hence the name?). And although Carle's illustrations are artistically admirable, they aren't a reliable guide to real life creatures.

Here are two hermit crab picture books that do the subject more naturalistic justice.

The first is Old Shell, New Shell: a Coral Reef Tale, by Helen Ward (Millbrook Press, 2002).

"This crab was very small
but he had been smaller
and the shell he owned
and loved
was getting tight."

He was beginning to look obvious
though he tried hard not to."

So he sets out to look for a new shell, soliciting the help of passing sea creatures, none of whom are the least bit interested. His quest takes an anxious turn when he is knocked out of his old shell, and tumbles down into one that is much much to big. But all is resolved happily when he meets another hermit crab, larger than he is, who has outgrown her shell...

The illustrations are full of lovely lifelike detail, and there are lots of things to spot on every page. A very pleasing book.

But here is the book that I think is the Best Hermit Crab Book Ever-- Hermit Crab's Home: Safe In a Shell, by Janet Halfman, illustrated by Bob Dacey and Debra Bandelin (2007, Smithsonian Institution). In both the two books above, we start in medias res, with the outgrowing of the old shell. Hermit Crab's Home begins at the beginning, with the tiny egg of a Land Hermit Crab tossed onto seashore rocks. It follows the hermit crab through the adventures of life as a hermit crab on land, including the obligatory finding a new shell episode (in her case, it comes from a sandcastle). And it ends with the crab casting her own eggs into the water.

One reason I liked this book so much is that the pictures are up close and low down--the world as a crab might see it. The menacing ghost crab looming above is quite spooky, the sand castle quite magical. I found the straight forward narrative of the crab's life more interesting than the more stylized renditions of the other two authors. It's more a story. Maybe the book even appealed so much to me because the crab protagonist is female. But maybe not--it also appealed to my boys!

Here are more Nonfiction Monday reviews, at Picture Book of the Day.

How To Ditch Your Fairy

How to Ditch Your Fairy, by Justine Larbalestier (2008, Bloomsbury, 320pp).

In the future-ish city of New Avalon, just about everyone has their own fairy. 14 year old Charlie's is a parking fairy. Yep, whenever she's in a car, it will always find a prime parking spot, first try. But that sort of magic is not nice at all for a a girl who's not old enough to drive, and who hates the smell of gas and car exhaust. She longs to have a better fairy--a clothes fairy, like her friend Rochelle, or even an "every boy will like you fairy," like her non-friend, Fiorenze (her fairy has the coincidental side effect of having the opposite effect on girls). Seeing her new friend Steffi, just about the cutest guy she's ever known, falling under the spell of Fiorenze's fairy is enough to drive her over the edge.

So Charlie tries to starve her fairy off, by avoiding mechanical transportation, hoping for a better one to come replace it. She can feel her fairy getting fainter, but in the meantime, she's constantly running late, and raking up demerits at her ultra strict all sports school. And then she find herself kidnapped by the school's star water polo player, who needs her parking luck for his own possibly nefarious purposes.

Fiorenze isn't happy with her fairy either. The two desperate girls are both sure nothing could be worse than what they're stuck with, and so they hatch a plan....

This is a very fun read, with the surreal sports school setting (all sports all the time) providing a wacky background to the even greater wackiness of all the fairies. And the fairies in turn give a new and imaginative spin to the more mundane story at the heart of the book--the familier one of a teenage girl trying to cope with a hectic life, wanting to make the basketball team, wanting a cute boy to like her, and wanting her best friend's clothes fairy to work on her, too.

It seems to me, in a vague sort of way, that fairies started appearing on the little girls' book scene about 10 years or so ago, and are still going strong today. If I knew any middle grade girls who were fans of those pink books with winged thingies on their covers, who are now in 8th grade or so (the publisher suggests ages 12 and up), this is the book I'd give them as a present.

How To Ditch You Fairy is due out in October, but you can read reviews by other people who have been enjoying their Advance Reader Copies (thanks, Bloomsbury) at Teen Book Review, Lessons from the Tortoise, at Librarilly Blond, and at Imperial Purple. And then just for kicks you can head over to Justine Larbalestier's blog, to read about her reading the reviews of her readers...

off topic-- roses on my barn

We wanted a red rose climbing up the barn, and voila--there it is! It will be three years old next month. The barn is 108 years old.

For pictures of the gardens of other bloggers, visit A Wrung Sponge.

My husband adds: The Rosaerie in Maine seems to be able to get most roses to grow quite far north. This one has the rather mundane name Parkdirektor Riggers. Unfortunately the genes for "climber" and "red" outshove the gene for "scentiferous."

In For Winter, Out for Spring

Generally when I read books of poetry, I try to carefully consider the poems and the illustrations, and think about why, or why not, they work for me. This wasn't the case when I read In for Winter, Out for Spring, by Arnold Adoff, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney (1991, Harcourt Brace and Co.). Instead I found myself thinking about the girl who is speaking the poems. I wanted to be little again myself, and to be her friend. The book is a verse story of her year, and I would like to play in the snow with her, dig the ground after the frost is over, pick mulberries, carve pumpkins, and so on, back to winter.

Which is not to say that I wasn't also appreciating the lovely poems as poems and the gorgeous illustrations, because I was. But the poems and pictures, with their focus on one little girl's experience of family, home, her garden, and the natural world, combine to paint a vivid picture of one very nice girl and her loving family that is more than the sum total of the parts.

Here's a poem I especially liked, but of course Blogger, bless its little heart, isn't letting me format it exactly the way it is in the book. Arggggh.

Aaron

My Older Brother
Once Told Me He
Was the Ruler Of This Hedge
Last
Year I had to Have Permission
To Pick Wild Violets For Mom

This Morning Aaron
Sits
In A
School
And I Am The New Boss
Of Hedge Trees
And Mole Holes
And Violets And Black Bugs
Under
Green
Moss

Thanks very much to Elaine, of Wild Rose Reader, from whom I received this book during her Poetry Month giveaways! It is truly lovely.

Poetry Friday is at A Wrung Sponge today!

The Owl Service available on DVD

I was pretty awestruck to see a comment by Alan Garner over at the Fidra blog, which I read regularly. Vanessa was talking about book banding in the UK, and Garner contributed his thoughts. My mental image of Garner is so tied his physical place--his home in Cheshire next to Alderley Edge,--that it's hard for me to imagine him as an online presence. Garner is the author of some truly excellent books for children, my favorite of which is The Owl Service.

So that led me to a google search, to see if a new book was forthcoming (no mention of one), and then on to the unofficial Alan Garner website, which has links galore to articles, interviews, and much more. Including a link to a newspaper article about a real life Owl Service event, headlined "Neighbor Killed by Owl, Not Husband."

Wandering around the Garner website, I found the perfect birthday present for my husband, who is a Garner devotee to the highest degree (the type who thinks Red Shift is a masterpiece, as opposed to those of us who think it is too depressing to even have in the same room as us let alone read), and who should now stop reading this if in fact he is.

Back in 1969, a television series was made of the Owl Service. It was filmed on location, in color, with Garner's active participation throughout the process. Here's a fascinating article about its production. Even though it was filmed in color, it was broadcast in black and white, but in February it was released as a dvd in color. With bonus features.

There are, of course, lots of movie adaptations of children's books flowing forth like, um, floodwaters or whatever, and most of them I have no particular interest in seeing. But the Owl Service, made with the creative involvement of the book's author, is one I look forward to watching.

And perhaps I shall also buy my husband another book for his Garner collection:

Timeslip Tuesday- Don't Know Where, Don't Know When

Charlotte Sometimes, The Ghosts, A String in the Harp, London Calling, The Time Garden, Moondial…all of these, and many more, are timeslip stories that I want to write about at some point. So I have decided that every Tuesday will be “Timeslip Tuesday” until I run out of books....

A timeslip story is simply one in which characters pass from one time to another, either forward or backward, generally without a mechanical device such as a time machine. I count ghost stories when the ghost characters are in fact characters traveling in time, and not just spooky special effects. If anyone reading this has a timeslip story they reviewed on their own blog, leave me a link, and I’ll make a list!

My first official Timeslip Tuesday Review is of a new book I just read for Mother Reader's 48 Hour Reading Challenge- Don’t Know Where, Don’t Know When, by Annette Laing (2007, Confusion Press, 206 pages, for Middle Grade readers). It was a perfect choice—brisk story telling, likeable characters, and a great plot.

Don’t Know Where, Don’t Know When throws three kids back in time from present day Snipesville, Georgia, into World War II England. Hannah, her brother Alex, and their friend Brandon are now war evacuees from London, struggling to figure out what is happening and why they have traveled through time. Then Brandon slips through time again to the England of World War I…and the mystery deepens. At its heart is the identity of George Braithwaite, the English child whose WW II identity card Brandon found in present day Georgia. Until George is found, there’s no going home.

I am very picky about books that talk about things I am knowledgeable about, in particular books that feature American kids coping with the alien life of the English, because I’ve been there and done that myself, and married as I am to someone from England, I am constantly confronted with Differences. And secondly, I am picky about books that involve time travel to periods that I know a lot about (even though in the case of WW I and II England, my knowledge comes from works of fiction). So I approached Don’t Know Where, Don’t Know When in my naturally suspicious way. Not far into it, my attitude had changed—I was now rooting for the author. “Please don’t mess up!” I thought, because Laing was doing such a good job making me believe in her characters and their experience that I didn’t want any jarring mistakes to throw me out of the story. And there weren’t any to speak of—hooray!

Here’s another point that makes this book worth recommending—one of the kids, Brandon is black, and as far as I know this is the only book for kids published in America that addresses what it was like to be a black kid in WW II and WW I England. (The other two kids, Hannah and Alex, have a Portuguese last name, Dias, that gets Anglicized to Day in WW II, making this book the only work of fiction for kids that addresses the Portuguese-American Child's Experience of WW II Evacuation :) ).

This is the first book The Snipesville Chronicles; volume two (featuring the same kids, but in a different time and place) is being written. If you are looking for a new series for a kid who loved the Magic Tree House Books three or four years ago, this might well be it.



Over at Becky's Book Reviews are a great interveiw with Annette Laing, and Becky's review of this book.

Age Banding in Britain

The scheme to put age banding on children's books (7+, 8 + etc) in the UK has kicked up a storm of protest. Here's the "No to Age Banding" website where you can read a petition signed by UK authors and educators and illustrators and other book type people (including Alan Garner)...1215 when I last looked.

For more on the Author's Rebellion, here's an article that came out last Friday in the Bookseller, from which the following quote is taken:

In the statement the authors outline a number of reasons why age-ranging is damaging: it will discourage children from reading outside their age band; it is over-prescriptive; and it is unnecessary in that there are plenty of clues on books as to their target reader. "To tell a story as well and inclusively as possible, and then find someone at the door turning readers away, is contrary to everything we value about books, and reading, and literature itself," it says.

And here's an eloquent discussion of the issue from a children's book seller in Scotland, and a great post from Liz over at A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Teacozy.

The whole concept of age banding seems so unnecessary to me. So Brave New World-ish. These generalizing assumptions about people based on their age could lead to societal disapproval (she bought her 7 year old a Nine!) to law (it is crime to allow children to read books above their age level. The Experts Know Best)....or children might have to start showing proof of age at the library....

And now I personally am filled with Doubt. Have I (shudder) read my own 7 books that are 8s, 9s, or even 10s? Yes. I think I have. That explains everything.

48 Hour Reading Challenge--my results

In conclusion: 2279 pages, 13 books read. Time spent blogging--negligible. Time spent reading--impossible to keep track of--my schedule was of the "reading while brushing teeth--2 minutes. Reading while kettle boiled 2.5 minutes" variety.

I'm a tad disappointed that I wasn't able to give myself to the challenge 100%--my sister and her two boys (4 and 3) are visiting, and what with my two boys, there was much screaming. But this year I chose my books much more wisely than last year, and enjoyed them much more.

THANKS MOTHER READER for organizing this! It was great fun!

My 48 Hours are up

Strangely, I didn't read all 71 (give or take) books in my to be read pile (I seriously doubt I'll ever read some of them). But I did read six more books in the 23 hours since my last update, and each of them was a pleasure (with one exception. Guess which).

Austenland, by Shannon Hale 194 pages

The Man without a Country by Edward Everett Hale. 66 pages. This fell off the shelf when I was pulling out Austenland, and I checked it out, thinking that perhaps I was Meant to read it. It is a patriotic screed written during the Civil War, propaganda for the Union side. Reading it did not make me feel much more patriotic. Possibly because I am from Virginia.

Terry's Best Term, by Evelyn Smith. 208 pages. Another pleasant school story.

Millicent Min, Girl Genius, by Lisa Yee. 248 pages. I was tickled to see that mine is not the only family that uses the term "reindeer games" to describe family fun.

Lush, by Natasha Friend 178 pages. A large part of this I read at a Monster Mini Golf Birthday Party to which my five year old was invited. We were both horrified by the loud noise and the crowds of people, had no interest in the golfing part, and ended up siting in a (relatively) quite corner for a while until it was polite to leave. Viz the book--although the "lush" of the title is the narrator's father, much is made of the fact that she is well endowed, breast wise, and I can't help wonder if Natasha Friend was consciously using lush in its other meaning to describe her as well, or if it's just a coincidence.

The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, by Jeanne Birdsall. 308 pages. How can one not like a book whose characters read and reference one's own favorite books?

25 hours into the 48 hour reading challenge

Five more books read, with great enjoyment

The Opposite of Invisible, by Liz Gallagher 151 pages Teen Romance; a good read

Don't Know Where, Don't Know When, by Annette Laing 206 pages WW I and WW II timeslip story--I'll be getting back to this one for a real review.

The Little Betty Wilkinson, by Evelyn Smith 224 pages. Evelyn Smith is one of my favorite mid 20th century writers of English girl's school stories; although this is not her best work, I still enjoyed it lots.

Joey Pigza Loses Control by Jack Gantos 196 pages. This was my first Joey Pigza book. Its frenetic energy matched my mood of reading frenzy.

Shooting the Moon by Frances O'Roark Dowell. 163 pages. A most excellent book- I wouldn't be surprised if it won, or at least was nominated for, Awards.

Now there's stuff I have to do outside before it gets too hot-- from the 60s yesterday to the nineties today. What's wrong with the 70s, I ask. Things could be better managed.

Turtle Island: Tales of the Algonquian Nations

48 Hour Reading Challenge Book Number 2:

Turtle Island: Tales of the Algonquian Nations by Jane Louise Curry, illustrated by James Watts. Work related. -Ish. But a co-worker did lend it do me. Jane Louise Curry tells a good story, and the stories in this book are good ones. But, in my opinion, she adds a European-ness to her telling that I found disconcerting. This is not in reference to specific post contact details (such as cows and buttons and bells)--Curry herself notes that these were in versions of stories told by Native story tellers. I don't think I'm enough of an expert to say anything much with any confidence about what makes a story Indian vs European, but I've read lots of stories closer to their original tellers, and these seem to have moved quite far from there. I do not think Jane Louise Curry actually talked to any Indian story tellers. And I find it annoying when authors say that certain tribes "vanished" and then base their own stories on stories told by members of those tribes (the particular example from this book being the vanished Mohegan, aka Mohecan).

THE ILLUSTRATIONS ARE AWFUL! Cartoonish caricatures.

Minutes spent blogging: 10

145pp

48 Hour Reading Challenge Book 1

I am taking part in Mother Reader's 48 Hour Reading Challenge, despite the usual job related work, house guests, children, large out door projects, etc etc. I started at 8:45am.

And I am pleased to have read one book so far-- The Mystery Hill Story, by Mark Feldman (1977). The Mystery Hill site is a collection of enigmatic rock features and structures in New Hampshire. Feldman thinks it was built by a bunch of Iberian Bronze Age Celts. I don't.

Minutes spent blogging: 5

pages read: 99

Eleven, by Patricia Reilly Giff

Eleven, by Patricia Reilly Giff (2008, 165 pages, for middle grade readers).

It’s a common thing to wonder if your family really is your family, but what happens when you find a newspaper clipping that says that you were once a missing child? A few days before his eleventh birthday, Sam finds such a clipping in an old metal box in the attic, with a picture of himself when he was three, missing, and with a different name. He begins to remember strange and disturbing things from long ago, and starts to worry that doesn't belong with Mack, his beloved grandfather. Is he meant to be with the horrible woman he dimly remembers, or safe with Mack and the two other friends who share their little complex of shops and apartments—Anima, who has an Indian restaurant, and Onji, who runs a deli? And why is he so afraid of the number 11?

But Sam can’t read, and can’t figure out more than a few words in the old newspaper article. For Sam, “…the lines moved like black spiders, stretching their legs and waving their feelers across the pages.” So the next day at school, he must find a reader. He decides on the new girl, Caroline, and fate seals their partnership when they are assigned to build a model castle together. They become friends—a friendship made anxious and intense by Caroline’s imminent move away to another town and yet another new school, and their need to solve they mystery and build the castle before she goes.

Sam’s family, Mack, Anima, and Onji, are one of the most lovingly written, deeply real examples of what makes a home a safe warm place for a child I can think of. Little things—Sam’s routine stop at Onji’s deli every morning for his lunch sandwich, and the gummi bears Onji hides in the sandwich on Sam’s birthday. Big things, like helping Sam with his reading, leading to one of the best examples of an adult reading out loud to a kid I’ve ever encountered. Here’s just one passage:

“Sam has to know the world,” Anima had said. “If he can’t read yet, one thing we can do while we try to help him is to give him the world of books.”

Mack had nodded.

And Onji: “How?”

“I’ll read aloud every night.” So when things quieted in the restaurant, Anima read to all of them for at least an hour. And what she read! Long poems, the Bible, stories about a kid who dug holes, about a spider who saved a pig. Anima’s accent made her sound like an English queen.

Sometimes they loved what she read, and sometimes they didn’t. She’d shrug, reading about copper mining or sea routes. Onji would fall asleep, his snores almost drowning her out. And sometimes Mack put his head back, his eyes closed. But Sam never slept.

And Mack, Sam’s grandfather, teaches him wood working, a bond and skill and intuitive knowledge they share, which Sam in turn shares with Caroline as they build their castle together and figure out what happened the night when three year old Sam was missing.

This great love and safety embodied in Sam’s family is thrown into question by the newspaper clipping. Sam is a great kid in a tremendously anxious situation, and I felt so bad for him I cried.* I think the mystery aspects of the plot—two kids following a trail of clues-- might take center stage for the younger reader, but for an adult reader like me, with boys of my own, it is the people and their love for each other that make this book outstanding.

Patricia Reilly Giff is the author of Lily’s Crossing, and Pictures of Hollis Woods, both of which I liked a lot. But this one I love. If anyone has knows any actual children who have read it, I’d be curious to know what they thought.

*I read it a second time yesterday, to refresh my memory, and sniffed all over again.

The Missing Piece Meets the Big O

A while ago, I blogged about Shel Silverstein's story, The Missing Piece, and my feelings of betrayal, anger, and disappointment when the Missing Piece was left high and dry by the selfish other shape. This other shape, a circle missing a triangle wedge, had offered to share life with a triangle who fit (the missing piece), so that the two of them could role quickly through the world together, but then ditched it, without a word of regret, to go on its own way. (My post about this, incidentally, is one of the most frequently read things I've written, and my opinion of the book is not universally shared--see the comment. Also, just as a helpful tip for those who google for them, there aren't any poems in it).

I feel much better now, because apparently Silverstein also felt a bit anxious about the missing piece, and wrote a sequel--The Missing Piece Meets the Big O (1981). The missing piece (mp) can't move on its own, because it's a triangle. It tries to find another shape with whom it fits, but to no avail. Then it meets the Big O, who is (surprise!) a big o. The Big O tells the mp to just go for it on its own, and slowly, as mp flips itself over and over, its angles wear down and it becomes a circle too! Hurray! Off it goes...

I actually do feel better about it all now, even though, in my usual cynical way, I am tempted to reject the moral on principle. But in all fairness, this promotion of self-reliance is a moral I can live with...

My life as an archaeologist

When I tell people I'm an archaeologist, a common reaction is, "That's so exciting!" Sometimes it is, mostly it isn't.

But now I have reached the pinnacle of career related fame and honor. The invitation came in the mail yesterday. I seem to have been the only person at work invited.

On June 20, I have the opportunity to be at A NEW U-HAUL TRUCK UNVEILING!

They are putting a picture of the Newport Tower on some U-hauls, and seem to feel that having an archaeologist at the unveiling party would be a nice touch. But I think I'll pass--I don't want to drive 35 miles each way for what is almost certain to be an anticlimax (there were no free snacks mentioned in the invitation).

This is the tower: It actually should look rather nice on a U-haul...