Jane Nissen books, and Noel Streatfeild

Yesterday I found that the book I reviewed for Timeslip Tuesday had recently been republished by Jane Nissen Books, of whom I had never heard. Today I explored their website. It is a veritable feast of beloved twentieth century books--indeed, on the website it says that "the purpose of this personal venture is to bring back into print some of the best-loved children’s books of the 20th century and to enable a new generation of readers to discover for themselves high-quality, timeless titles that should not be lost."

I am especially pleased that they have just republished Green Smoke, by Rosemary Manning--this is a lovely younger-middle-grade book about a little girl who meets a dragon. It delighted me as a child, and my boys also love it.

It is also rather pleasing to see that two Noel Streatfeild books have been re-published-- Tennis Shoes and Circus Shoes. The former is about a family of four children who are being pushed to succeed at tennis--even thought tennis is less appealing to me than theater or ballet, this is one of my favorite Streatfeilds, perhaps because not everyone in the family ends up being wildly successful. Circus Shoes (the original title was The Circus is Coming) less about finding one's talent and pursuing it singlemindly. It tells of two orphans, who run away to find their uncle, a circus clown, and struggle to find a place for themselves in his strange and wonderful world. Here's a review from the Guardian from 2006, when it was re-issued.

The only sadness, which happens every time one sees lots of books one wants being published in the UK, is the exchange rate-- Jane Nissen Books has a link to Amazon UK, but that gets expensive fast. Amazon over here does, however, seem to have a lot of used copies of Tennis Shoes available at reasonable prices (edition unspecified), so perhaps there is a trickle down effect...

Incidentally, Oxford Children's Classics has, just this month, republished Party Shoes, a Streatfield that is hardish to find over here, and it is available at Amazon new.

And finally, the dvd of Ballet Shoes starring Emma Watson is now available over here--here's what the New York Times says about it.

The House in Norham Gardens, by Penelope Lively

Welcome to another Timeslip Tuesday, wherein I look at a book that I had heard lots about, but hadn't read until a few weeks ago. It's consistently described as a Timeslip--but the time travel element is miniscule, which disappointed me.

It is The House in Norham Gardens, by Penelope Lively (1974, for older middle grade readers and up).

In wintry Oxford, back in the 1970s, a fourteen year old girl begins to explore her great aunts' attic. Hoarders of both material things and things of the mind, the aunts have shared their house of nineteen rooms with Claire since the death of her parents. They are getting older, money is getting tighter, and Claire is growing up--all unsettling things. But what Claire finds in the attic is the most unsettling thing of all.

Her great-grandfather had travelled to New Guinea long ago, on a voyage of anthropological imperialism of the sort that has filled many western museums with the cultural treasures of other people. One thing never made it to the museum--a painted tamburan, a ceremonial shield of a New Guinea tribe. This shield begins to fill Claire's thoughts, until at least it seems she begins to see people of the Tribe from a century ago, coming to Oxford to fetch back this lost piece of their being. Then Claire opens the door to the outside and comes face to face with a man of the tribe.

After this strange, dreamlike encounter, where no words are exchanged, the cold winter begins to break, and the tensions in Claire's life begin to be resolved. An African student becomes part of the household, bringing both new life and financial security, Claire becomes more at peace with her position of loving, respectful responsibility toward her aunts. As spring comes, Claire has her final dream, wherein she herself travels to New Guinea. She sees that the people there, in the present, have moved forward in time themselves, and no longer need the piece of their past that was in her aunts' attic.*

The House in Norham Gardens is clearly a book about the interstices of time, but I feel that it is a bit to put it in the Timeslip category. The more I think about it, the more I think that the shield and the people of New Guinea are a metaphorical reflection of Claire's own life, and don't actually have any magical reality. Still, it's an awfully good read for the introspective type, interested in inter-generational relationships, old houses and the memories they hold, with a bit of magic, metaphoric or real, thrown in for good measure.

The House in Norham Gardens was recently republished by Jane Nissen Books. Here are some other reviews, at the Scholar's Blog, at Good To Read, and at Books for Keeps, a UK online book magazine. They are all worth reading in their own right!

Anyone else with a timeslip review is welcome to leave a link in the comments, and I will add it to this post.



spoiler:


*and so the museum gets it after all, which I found a bit of a let down.

Elephant Run, by Roland Smith

I am an enthusiastic reader of my blog stats--today was made more joyful by learning that mine is the second entry that Google shows when asked to find "experiences with demonic birds at sea." On a slightly more mundane note, it's become obvious that many students were asked to read Roland Smith's book, Peak (2007) for their summer reading, and that they didn't (lots of searchs for "plot summary peak" etc). I myself successfully read Peak last fall when it was nominated for the Cybils*, and I enjoyed it enough (here's my review) to see what else Smith had written. Another 2007 book, Elephant Run (Hyperion, 318 pp), caught my eye, and I recently made the time to read it.

London is being blitzed, and 14 year old Nick's mother thinks that it would be a good idea to get him out of there. So she sends him off to his father's teak plantation in Burma, where he hadn't been since he was a child. Turns out this was a bad, bad idea--almost immediately, the Japanese invade Burma, take over the plantation, and send Nick's father to a prison camp. Nick remains behind in servitude to the plantation's new Japanese overlord, until, with some unlikely companions, he escapes on elephant-back to rescue his father and race for the border into India.

This story makes for an exciting read, and I'd be happy to recommend it (probably more to boys than to girls), in large part because of its unusal subject matter and setting. There aren't, as far as I know, any other YA books designed to appeal to boys that address the Japanese conquest of east Asia in WW II. If I were a high school teacher of WW II history, I would defiantly put this book on my list of optional reading.

But I didn't find Nick believable as a boy from 1941 England--he came across as an out-of-shape contemporary American teenager (which perhaps means that the book will have more appeal to that audience). I felt that the relationships between the characters only existed to further the plot, not as things of interest in and of themselves (and as a result, I found the ending a bit contrived). This made it feel to me (possibly with complete injustice) as though Smith had set out to write a Book for Boys (see above), and therefore didn't bother too much with the interactions of his characters, which is the sort of thing that Girls like to read about. Although most of the story is told from Nick's point of view, several chapters are told from that of Mya, a teenaged Burmese girl who dreams of being an elephant trainer. This was useful plot-wise, but it didn't make Mya much more of a believable character in my eyes, and (cynic that I am) I found myself thinking that Smith had given Mya her own chapters to add Girl Appeal to his Boy Appeal. There is also a friendly and poetry-loving Japanese soldier, so that we don't fall into the trap of assuming everyone in the Japanese army is Evil.

I did enjoy reading it though--it is strong on setting and story! I guess my dissatisfaction comes from my hope that this would be comparable to Neville Shute's (a wondhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.giferful book), and (since that is such a wonderful book) I was bound to feel a bit let down.

*The Cybils are awards given by the kidslit blogging community to the best books in several categories. Nominations for this years awards (anyone can nominate their favorites) will be starting in October. Here's the Cybil's website for more info.

Welcome to Poetry Friday!

Welcome to Poetry Friday! Please leave a link in the comments, and as the day progresses (the dropping off of children at school--hooray! the removal of 200 moldy boxes of artifacts from their condemned home in an old house at Rhode Island College into Department of Transportation dump trucks -sigh, a bit of peaceful time at work, back to get boys, and home again, or possibly to the library if the computer has decided to hate blogger again) I shall add the links.

Here's the poem I've chosen-- The Highwayman, by Alfred Noyes (1880-1958). It's an old chestnut that I remember my mother reading to me when I was little, and which I read recently to my boys who listened wide-eyed. I think would make a truly splendid picture book...UPDATE! One of today's contributors, Slyvia from Poetry for Children, has just let me know that it "HAS been issued in picture book form by Oxford U, illustrated by Charles Keeping, and in the VISIONS IN POETRY series in a film noir-ish interpretation of a biker in NYC." Somehow I find the former more appealling.

PART ONE

I

THE wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

II

He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

III

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

IV

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

V

"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

VI

He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(Oh, sweet, black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the West.

The thrilling conclusion (and it is thrilling) can be found here.

So again, welcome, and I look forward to reading your poems!

Links:

John Mutford, over at The Book Mine Set, is in with a look at Jailbreaks, an anthology of Canadian sonnets edited by Zachariah Wells.

Julie Larios at The Drift Record is in with two poems by Richard Wilbur, one for grown ups and one from his book Opposites and More Opposites, and then crowns her post with an original poem of her own.

Little Willow is in with Hamlet's letter to Ophelia --Never Doubt I Love. She should not go to the Scholar's Blog, where more Hamlet is featured, unless she wants to experience the joy of getting to see David Tennant vicariously.

Sarah at In Need of Chocolate is in with a lovely butterfly poem.

At Just One More Book, Andrea looks at Ocean Wide, Ocean Deep, by Susan Lendroth.

In honor of Labor Day, Mary Lee at A Year of Reading offers It Couldn't Be Done, by Edgar Guest, and Stacey at Two Writing Teachers offers an acrostic by Nicholas Gordon. I am also putting the two poems of Louisa May Alcott, posted at the Write Sisters, here...the first one is especially relevant (and made me grit my teeth a tad).

Cloudscome, at A Wrung Sponge, has a doozy of a poem about starting school, Lisa at A Little of This a Little of That shares the poem that will be on her students' desks on Tuesday, and Elaine at Wild Rose Reader has a back to school poetry book that looks like a great one to check out this time of year.

I for one am very glad school has started because my boys were getting very tired of each other's exclusive company toward the end there... and I was getting tired of the predictable results. Somehow my gentle dove like murmurings about violence not being the answer had no effect. But anyway, Yat-Yee Chong shares a poem on siblings by Naomi Shihab Nye that I look forward to reading.

Appropriate for the school starting season (I just spent an hour at the school playground, meeting new parents) is Msmac's original poem inspired by the prompt-- "I come from..." And there is also an original back to school poem from Gregory K. at GottaBook.

Elaine also has three lovely poems for the end of summer at Blue Rose Girls (at least, I assume they are lovely because Elaine likes them but goodness knows I have not yet had a chance to read anything I'm linking too...that is a pleasure all the sweeter for being deferred, or maybe not). On the same theme, Tricia of The Miss Rumphius Effect shares Farewell To Summer, by George Arnold, and Rebecca at A Gypsy Caravan shares another by Rowena Bennett. At the Three Legged Dragon, Tabitha visits some Scottish poetry, and I'm putting the poem she shares (Fern by Liz Nevin) in this category too, because I think it is metaphorically applicable.

On the other hand, Becky at Farm School is clinging to summer, with Wild Bees, by John Clare (never heard of him--there are a lot of new ones for me today).

Laura Salas is keeping me company on the other side of the law with a poem about pirates, "Cat-o'-Nine-Tails," and some15 Words or Less poems.

Sara at Read Write Believe posts about finding lost poems, which has just become easier, and shares a link to the apropos poem, One Art, by Elizabeth Bishop.

Susan over at Chicken Spaghetti has a link to very interesting looking article that's up at the Poetry Foundation, and Karen Edmisten also links to it, and not to take away from their blog stats but here is the direct link because it does look, as I said, very interesting.

And here's one that I did take the time to read, and am glad I did--Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver, over at On the Learn.

Two participants today reference Obama-- Janet at Writer2be is in with some Langston Hughes, and Sylvia at Poetry for Children has an excerpt from I am the Bridge, by Carole Boston Weatherford. In a patriotic mood, Kelly Fineman has some of Walt Whitman's America (I love it). And I guess this goes in this section--a rat's version of America the Beautiful, from Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat, brought to us by Becky's Book Reviews.

At Semicolon, Sherry is in with an English translation of a stirring 4th-century hymn. Barbara at Stray Thoughts shares a poem by John Donne.

Eisha at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast has a bit of Sappho (I knew there were issues with the survival of her poems, but didn't know we had only one complete example).

Anastasia at Picture Book of the Day is in with a look at Sputter Sputter Sput, by Babs Bell (looks like fun). Also reviewing a book is Kelly at Big A little A--Our California, which looks lovely (although the title, to an East Coaster like me who has never been to CA, makes me suspicious--is the "our" including or excluding me?).

At Finding Wonderland, you can enjoy The Microbe, by Hilaire Belloc (which I had never read--I love those last two lines!), or you can appreciate (though not enjoy) a poem from China posted at Biblio File.

Pause, during which, among other things, we troop down to the end of the street, along with all our neighbors, to watch one of the mill buildings at the end of the street burn. Much smoke, no fire. I hope no firefighters get hurt.

Ruth at There is no such thing as a Godforsaken Town, has an Emily Dickinson poem that's new to her (and to me)--Surgeons must be very careful.

Liz in Ink shares Robert Louis Stevenson's poem, Now When the Number of My Years, and Em at Em's Bookshelf also is in with RLS- The Land of Story-books. It's Em's first P.F. post--welcome!

Suzanne, at Adventures in Daily Living, is in with the lyrics to I Saw My Youth Today, by Richard Shindell.

At Paper Tigers, there's a link to a lovely essay Aline wrote--Waking up on the Right Side of the Poetry Bed.

And finally, with The Answer to the Puzzle, is Miss Erin!

Thank you all for coming to Poetry Friday! I am looking forward to going back and reading in depth what I just skimmed. If I messed up your link, misspelled your name, or grossly mis-categorized your offering, please let me know (charlotteslibrary@gmail.com). If you notice any egregious typos, errors of grammar or style, or simply disagree with my choice of words, you can let me know that too.

Need, by Carrie Jones

Need, by Carrie Jones (Bloomsbury, 2008, 290 pages in ARC form)

Carrie Jones is one of my favorite writers of books about teenaged girls. So when Need arrived, I jumped right in without stopping to read the back of the book. I began reading along happily, following Zara to her grandmother's house in Maine. She's been sent there after the death of her father has thrown her into a depression to deep for her mother to cope with (but there's more to it...). "You look like a zombie," says a random stranger on the plane, and indeed, that's how she feels--dead inside, filling her mind by naming fears and writing Amnesty International letters. And she arrives in wintry Maine (only October, actually, but plenty cold and snowy), and starts a new school, and meets some cool kids, mean kids, and extraordinary kids, and, unlike Zara's grandmother, I was more or less untroubled by the creepy guy Zara keeps seeing.

But then!

It turns out that he is not just a creepy guy, he is a Wicked Pixie, driven by inhuman needs to do inhuman things! The back cover says this too, so I don't count this as a spoiler. But anyway, this book is not like Carrie Jones' other books. It is not just a high school story, it is a high school story about nasty pixies, cool were-creatures, and a struggle to the death (or at least to life-long imprisonment, which in this case, since we're talking inhuman-type creatures here, can be rather long). And that's all the plot I'm telling about, so as not to spoil it. But it has action, suspense, and luv.

It is also about winter in Maine (chilly), starting a new high school (fraught), and coming to terms with the death of a beloved parent (even more fraught). And those realistic elements were the parts of this book I liked best--the fantastical plot was lots of fun, and kept me turning the pages, but I found it a tad over the top. But fans of paranormal fantastical romance adventure stories featuring high school students should adore it!

Amazon gives the release date as December 23--this means that if you have someone on your gift list who fits the above description, they probably will not have had a chance to read it yet and it will make perfect gift. At her blog, Carrie wrote of having a contest to give an ARC away, and as soon as the co-worker to whom I have lent mine gives it back, I will be passing on my ARC to a lucky reader here. Unless my co-worker is a book mangler, and returns it in unsuitable for giving away condition. I will leave a note here when I know.

UPDATE: My ARC of Need is now up for grabs here!

But in the meantime, there are Carrie Jones' other books, two of which I've reviewed-Tips on having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend, and Girl, Hero.

An aside: here's what I found creepiest about the book--the cover when you glimpse it upside down and the trees turn into the straggly hair of some eyeless horror. Coincidence, or conspiracy?

Reading and eating...

Isn't it a terrible feeling when, happily assuming that instinct is all powerful, you leave aspects of raising your children to nature, and it doesn't work? There my older son and I were yesterday afternoon, hustling his way through the last of the summer reading that has to be done by Thursday morning (and this is not the part I feel bad about, as procrastination is our normal way of being in the world), and he allows as how he wants a snack, and can he watch a dvd while he eats it.

"I'll get you something, and you can read while you eat," I tell him.

"But I can't read and eat at the same time!' he cries.

Shock and horror on my part. Every day of his life his father and I have been modeling this behaviour for him, but have somehow failed to link eating and reading in his mind. Sigh.
So I got him his snack, and I held the book for him while he ate with one hand and turned the pages with the other. Sigh again. Like learning to ride a bicycle, it will probably take time, but then, I hope, he will have mastered this useful skill for the rest of his life.

On the other hand, if he doesn't, at least he won't have to go through the same thought process I do: "I'd really like to read new hardcover Book X, but I also want ice-cream, so I will have to settle for ratty paperback book y." This is probably why I re-read my comfort books so often.

But anyway, other parents, watch your children and make sure they are not just snacking in idleness, or in front of the tv! Or you, too, might have to sit on the sofa re-reading the same bit of Encyclopedia Brown four times over, waiting for the page to turn.

Tom's Midnight Garden

For this week's edition of Timeslip Tuesday, I have a classic, or perhaps even the classic English time travel story--Tom's Midnight Garden, by Phillipa Pearce. It won the Carnegie Medal the year it was published (1958), it was dramatized by the BBC three times, and most recently (1999) was made into a full length film. It is also available as an audio book, which we listened to last week as we drove for hours and hours of Virginia.

Tom had been looking forward to the summer vacation--he and his brother Peter had great tree house building plans. But when Peter came down with measles, Tom is sent off to stay with his uncle and aunt, in a small flat that had been chopped out of an old Victorian house. Unable to sleep, Tom is drawn downstairs by the grandfather clock in the hall outside striking thirteen, and opening the back door of the house, finds the Garden...

"a great lawn where flower-beds bloomed; a towering fir-tree, and thick, beetle-browed yews that humped there shapes down two sides of the lawn; on the third side, to the right, a greenhouse almost the size of a real house; from each corner of the lawn a path that twisted away to some other depths of garden with other trees."

Great and terrible is Tom's disappointment the next day, when he opens the same door and sees only dustbins--the land belonging to the old house had been built up years ago. But the next night, the clock strikes again, and Tom steps back again into the past when the garden still existed. There he meets small orphaned Hattie, who also longs for a playmate, and night after night they share the trees, the hiding places, the orchard, meadow, and river, and all the other things that every perfect garden has.

But time doesn't stay still. In the past, Hattie grows older, in the present, Tom grows more desperate to enjoy the garden before he has to go home, and his brother Peter grows lonelier. And at last, one night Tom opens the door, and the garden is no longer there.

This isn't a book where Lots of Things Happen. It is subtle in its buildup, and unhurried in its descriptions. The small adventures that Hattie and Tom have in the garden and its environs are not particularly strange and wonderful--but because these two children have become friends across time, each one suspecting that the other is a ghost, their encounters are magical. And because Pearce takes her time in describing each of Tom's visits to the garden, and describes at length as well Tom's daytime thoughts, as he tries to figure out what is happening, the reader gets to follow at Tom's pace, and appreciate it all along with him.

So you might think that such a book would not hold the interest of two boys, 8 and 5, on the homeward leg of a very long car trip. But it did. They protested vociferously whenever us grownups tried to take breaks from it. And actually, I take back my earlier statement that the happenings were not strange and wonderful. They have never shinned up yew trees in an English garden, or chased geese in an English meadow, or ice skated down a frozen river. Or been orphans tormented by a cruel aunt, as Hattie is, or, like Tom, been accused of being a demon by the gardener, the only other person who can see him (I have perhaps accused my boys of been demons, but they probably weren't listening). Or most magical of all, they have never forced their insubstantial bodies through gateways their hands cannot open (I like this bit--Tom leaves his head till the very end, anxiously unsure what is going to happen to it when it goes through). In a way, these things are stranger to my boys than fire-breathing dragon or the like would have been--they have become blase about such things. And the garden itself is such a wonderfully real place that anyone with any sense at all would want to run into it to play...

Here's a picture that I think match's Tom and Hatty's garden rather well--it's Levins Hall, in the Lake District:



Philippa Pearce wrote only a handful of full length books for children, including The Minnow on the Say (1954) The Way to Sattin Shore (1985). She died in 2006; here is her obituary. And Here's a link to an interview with Philippa Pearce from a few years back, talking about this book.

As usual, anyone who'd like to share a timeslip review of their own is welcome to leave me a link!

House of Dance, by Beth Kephart

House of Dance, by Beth Kephart (2008, Harper Teen, 263 pp)

15 year old Rosie is facing an empty summer. Her best friend is away for the summer, and Nick, the boy next door, is hard at work. $20 a week comes from her father, who left years ago, but that doesn't count for much, and her mother is trying to find the answer to her own loneliness in the arms of her married window-washer boss. But perhaps even lonelier is her grandfather, living alone on the opposite end of town, his daughter not speaking to him, still missing his wife who died long ago, and now dying himself.

So Rosie spends her summer with him, trying in the time left to them to be as much a granddaughter as she can. She sorts through all his things, trying to organize what he has saved, trying to decide what piece of his past she should save. And in doing so, she learns about her grandmother, who loved to put on music and dance the afternoons away.

Her daily path to her grandfather's house takes her past The House of Dance, and the sounds of ballroom dance music draw her inside. With her father's money, she learns to dance herself, so that she can give her grandfather back a little piece of his past by dancing for him. More of the money goes for her dress, for food, for flowers--for bringing a last splash of color to his life. In planning for that evening, Rosie's loneliness ends, as the people from the House of Dance, and others in the community, come together to help. Even Nick.

"My granddad," I said again, "is dying."
"I know," he said. "You told me."
"Dancing is the opposite of dying,"I said.
He looked at me strangely, a look of wonder on his face. A look that said, "Come on, Rosie. Say it."
"Dancing is going somewhere without packing you bags. Like you did on the train when the girl sang. Dancing is the thing I"m giving Granddad."
"You're a good soul," Nick said, after a very long time.
"I want you to come to a party," I said. "A dance party, right down the street. At my granddad's house."
"I'll come," he said. (p.228)

House of Dance is the most tender and loving ya novel about the relationship between a teenager and a grandparent I've ever read. Of course, as usual when I make statements like that, I can only think of one other example (A Ring of Endless Light, by Madeline L'Engle). So maybe I should just say something along the lines of "this is a truly tender and loving story." Which is true.

Here are two other reviews, from The Happy Nappy Bookseller, and Little Willow.

Three more bookstores visited

We are back again, this time from a wedding in Vermont, and that is it travel-wise for a while. Which means that I will have more quality time to spend harvesting zucchinis. And encouraging my 8 year old to finish his summer reading--three mystery books. We have 2 to go. And it's not because he hasn't been reading, we just had put off the required element...we have bred for procrastination. And, d.v., I will have more time for writing about all the books I want to write about.

We only got to visit three used bookstores on our recent trip, and had no thrilling finds. But I was able to spend about $80 of the Friends of the Library's money on some very good and very recent books that we didn't have yet (and that I have been wanting to read, not that I have an ulterior motive in making my selections or anything). We also had a very good time at the wedding!

If anyone ever wants recommendations for used bookstores in New England, let me know! At this point, I have been to almost all of them, except those in the far far north and west....

The spoils of our journey

There is part of me that would have liked to have been a Victorian world traveler, bringing back treasures from around the world and creating Displays with them. In that spirit, here is the loot from our recent trip to the Great Smoky Mountains and back- all four of us, with our disparate ages and tastes, are represented here. My 5 year old's favorite book, The Red Lion, was being read when the picture was taken, and so sadly was left out, hence the awkward photoshopping (and as far as I am concerned, the red lion is guilty of false advertising--none of the interior lions, which aren't even that prominently featured, are red. But, having swallowed without question the dictum that children must chose their own books if they are to become Readers, whatever. It works for him).

All in all, I was rather disappointed. Although I am pleased with some of my books, I never once squealed with glee...The best book of the lot is not shown, because it is a Christmas present for my sister, and I wrapped it and left it at our parent's house, where, if all goes well, I will remember to look for it come December.

We are going to Vermont tomorrow for a wedding. Our friends thoughtfully picked a part of the state where there are many used book stores, so I am filled with fresh hope...

Wandering around looking for books

Today we are heading for home on the last leg of a trip that took us from Rhode Island all the way to Spruce Pine, North Carolina (and isn't it truly remarkable just how big Virginia really is? My mother just told me that the end of VA is at the same longitude as Detroit, which seems extremely far away...). Anyway, we drove and drove, visiting friends, and stopping at many used bookstores, some of which had sadly closed, hoping to find wondrous things, or at least one really valuable book for pennies to pay for the cost of gas. We bought many books, but sadly, nothing that will make our fortune, and of course with all those books in the trunk the cost of our gas keeps going up. Still, there is always New Jersey to look forward to today. Perhaps not many people look forward to driving through NJ, but there are several very good used book stores. There are some in Connecticut too (the Book Barn in Niantic, for instance) but by then we will probably be fading fast.

So that's why I haven't been here much this past week.

To Be Like the Sun

All around our bird feeder and beyond sunflowers grow; I've learned to recognize the babies and, within reason, I let them be when I weed. This is peak sunflower time--in a few weeks, most of the stems will have been broken by greedy chipmunks and squirrels.

To Be Like the Sun, by Susan Marie Swanson, illustrated by Margaret Chodos-Irvine (Harcourt, 2008), is a beautiful sunflower picture book. "Hello, little seed, striped gray seed. Do you really know everything about sunflowers?" a little girl asks on the first page. And the seed does, growing up to the sun until summer passes. When winter comes, the little girl holds her flower's seeds:

"and a sunflower seed
is smaller than a word,
but I remember:
you were taller than everyone."

Lovely poetry, I think, and indeed part of the text began life as a poem published in Swanson's collection Getting used to the Dark: 26 Night Poems (1997). In expanded form, it still reads like a prose poem. Indeed, it is the most pleasant book about seeds to read out loud I've yet encountered. With many books, I change the text as I read--but not the ones like this, that don't need any fixing. The illustrations are pattern and texture rich, large pictures that make the book a good one for reading out loud to a group.

Here at Cynsations is a great interview with Susan Marie Swanson from last April, when this book came out. And here's another review, at Pink Me.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is at Big A little a today.

1632 for Timeslip Tuesday

Welcome to another edition of Timeslip Tuesday--as always, please leave me a link if you'd like to share a review! Today I offer an adult book, shelved as Fantasy in my library--1632, by Eric Flint (2000). This is available as a free e-book here, if you want to check it out. It is a wildly popular book, with sequels and fanfiction galore (here's the wikipedia link).

In the year 2000, Granitville, West Virginia, is whisked away by alien forces and plunked down in the past--in the year 1631, Thuringia, Germany. This is a bad time to be in Germany--the Thirty Years War is raging, and mercenary armies are wrecking havoc in name of religion and various European powers.

Once the shock of the actual time travel fades, Mike, the leader of the local United Mine Workers of America, leads a party of men out to see what's happened. What they find is rape and pillage, literally. Guns blazing, the men of the UMWA rescue the victims, and begin a course of military action and political maneuvering that will shift the balance of power in Europe. The folks of Grantville are stuck, so they decide to rebuild the United States in 17th-century Europe, and bring the Bill of Rights to a place and its people that badly need them.

There are great characters here--a favorite of mine is Julie, once a cheerleader, now the best sharpshooter in the Grantville army, but there are lots of others. Many are true heroes, many are entertaining, some are thought provoking. But mainly, it is awfully fun to cheer on the good guys as they wreck havoc among the rapers and pillagers arrayed against them. Despite the fact that I am a pacifist at heart. Alright, maybe this book is rather violent. I did skip some of the war bits, of which there were many, and I did prefer the "how can we build a civilization here in this alien wilderness" plot line. But at a time when the USA is stuck in a stupid war, it was a nice change to be able to cheer on my countrymen as they fight with reason and right on their side for the creation of a better world. It is also not often that one gets to cheer for the UMWA, for the ex-Vietnam vets, for the regular people of West Virginia, all bent on bringing civilization, including such details as religious tolerance, into a dark time. I found the flag of the new United States, with its single star, rather poignant.

Flint is not shy about using his story as a vehicle to express his political opinions, and one issue, in particular, is addressed head on. When the reality of their situation dawns on them, a Town Meeting is held in the high school gym to discuss options. Some of the time travellers argue that the only way to protect the American Way of Life in the seventeenth century is to close the boarders of Grantville, and keep out the unhappy people of Germany. Mike, the UMWA leader, comes in strongly on the other side--as well as being stupid from a military and economic point of view, welcoming refugees from the violent insanity outside Grantville is a crucial step toward creating a new United States based on the principles that make the idea of the USA worthwhile. Shades of today's immigration debate.

Timeslip wise, there isn't a whole lot of exploration of the American's psychological reaction to the time they find themselves in than (other then their repeated realization that things stink for the plain people of Germany). After all, they've travelled with their whole town, so it's not as disturbing as travelling back alone. And by the second half of the book, the story was almost exclusively military and political, and less social and economic (which is the side of things, being an anthropological archaeologist, that I like better). But my gosh, this was a cracking good read.

I would enthusiastically recommend this one to older teenagers, especially boys. There is one pretty explicit sex scene, but I don't think it's anything that will come as a surprise to that audience. There is also a bit of disemboweling,heads being blow apart, and that sort of thing, a bit like a violent video game. Despite this, I am also going to recommend this book to my mother, protective of her though I am.

This book is also going to be featured in my Syllabus of European History as Learned Through the Reading of Historical Fiction. I am infinitely more knowledgeable know about the Thirty Years War and continental Europe in the first half of the seventeenth century (thinking about this, I am realizing that the reason I know so little about 18th century is that I have no favorite historical fiction from this century. Any thoughts?)

I wish that Eric Flint had included a copy of the Bill of Rights, which is featured so prominently. I was ashamed at my total inability to recall much of anything about it. So, because it is rather an important document that deserves to be read, I am leaving the topic of books to present the Bill of Rights, which are the first ten amendments to the Constitution:

* First Amendment – Establishment Clause, Free Exercise Clause; freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly; right to petition

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

* Second Amendment – Right to keep and bear arms.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

* Third Amendment – Protection from quartering of troops.

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

* Fourth Amendment – Protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

* Fifth Amendment – due process, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, eminent domain.

No person shall be held to answer for any capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

* Sixth Amendment – Trial by jury and rights of the accused; Confrontation Clause, speedy trial, public trial, right to counsel

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district where in the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

* Seventh Amendment – Civil trial by jury.

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

* Eighth Amendment – Prohibition of excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

* Ninth Amendment – Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

* Tenth Amendment – Powers of states and people.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Colleen, at Chasing Ray, suggested that this month those of us blogging about books consider books that have political messages, so this is my contribution! The link above takes you to the page where she's rounding up relevant posts, if you have one you'd like to share...

A bit of Seo Jeong-ju for Poetry Friday

Today I am offering a bit of the poetry of the great 20th century Korean poet, Seo Jeong-ju, which I found here.

Here's a poem for all of us who have ever swung and swung and swung as children (or grown ups, some of us), or watched the toes of our children reach for the sky as we pushed them away from ourselves and well past our comfort zones...

Complaint from a swing

- Chun-hyang's first monologue

Push hard on the cords of the swing, Hyang-dan,
as if you were launching a boat
out toward distant seas,
Hyang-dan!

as if you were pushing me off for ever
away from this gently rocking willow tree,
these wild flowers like those embroidered on my pillow,
away from these tiny butterflies, these warblers,
Hyang-dan!

For the rest, you'll have to go to the website, where it is a few poems down....

And for more poems, the Poetry Friday Roundup is at Becky's Book Reviews today!

Obituary for Pauline Baynes

Pauline Baynes, illustrator for CS Lews and JRR Tolkien, has died. Here's her obituary at the Guardian yesterday.

Chalice, by Robin McKinley

The first thing I did this morning was to check the tracking number of the ARC of Chalice that was on its way to me. It had been loaded onto a delivery truck in Fall River, and at 11am, it was in my hot little hands. I was at work, and I intended to be Strong, and wait till I got home to read it. This did not last long. At ten minutes past 11, I went to the cafe across the street and bought a chocolate chip cookie, and took a few hours off work...

Such pleasure.

Chalice, coming in September from Putnam, is a delight. A land of troubled magic, bee-keeping, and a strong and book savvy heroine combine in a captivating story. Mirasol, the young and untrained Chalice of Willowlands, must bind the land itself together, and must bind herself and the Circle to the new Master. But the new Master, the leader of the Circle, was sent to the priests of Fire as a young man, and has been drawn back to human kind terribly changed--his very touch burns, and beneath his cloak, his body roils with fire. And the Overlord of the Willowlands and its neighboring demesnes plans to replace him with an Heir of his own choosing, who will throw the land into chaos unless Mirasol can stop him. http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Happy sigh. Great characters, great story, magical honey, and a strong love of place that all of us who tend our own pieces of land can understand. Not to mention the bits of romance, understated but intense. A great read for anyone 10 years or so and up.

Thank you to kind person who had an extra ARC, and kindly shared with me! But although not everyone is as lucky as me (and I feel very lucky indeed), Robin has put a large chunk of the beginning of Chalice up on her blog.

Fog Magic for Timeslip Tuesday

Today's book for Timeslip Tuesday is Fog Magic, by Julia L. Sauer (1943, 107 pages in its newest incarnation, ages 9-12). I was surprised when I saw how old this book is, because it does not feel dated in the least. It won a Newbery Honor in 1944 (Johnny Tremain was the winner that year).

Greta has always loved the fog that often envelopes her small village on the east coast of Canada, and has always felt that there was something drawing her out into it... One foggy day, when she is ten years old, she discovers why—down by the shore, she sees through the mist buildings standing where the old village had been abandoned years ago.

“So this,” she said to herself, “this is what can happen to you in a fog. I always knew that there must be something hidden.”

There in the foggy village, Greta finds friends, and becomes part of stories that were still being told in her own time. The story of lost Ann, alone and starving in the woods, the story of ships wrecked on the treacherous coast, a grief-crazed Captain’s wife, forcing the ship’s crew at gunpoint to bring her husband’s body home, and more. But she must always leave before the fog clears, and she can take nothing home with her through the mist, until it is time for her to say good-bye to her childhood, and to the past.

This is a gentle story—as is evident from the description, there isn’t much “plot” in the conflict, action packed, adventure sense of the word. But it is magical. Because there isn’t much in the way of “happenings” to serve as a distraction, the reader can simply enjoy going with Greta on her journeys back in time to a place that is at once strange and familiar.

This book serves as a timeslip for me personally, bringing back the memories of when I first read it. I was ten, like Greta, and loved cats (the new cover, unlike mine from the 1970s edition, doesn’t show the grey kitten—pity). We were living in the Bahamas, and a new bookstore had just opened, the first bookstore that I can ever remember going to on a regular basis. I loved both the bookstore and the book. Reading it again just now, all the mental pictures I had of the forested, foggy coast all came back, just as I had pictured them during the many times I re-read this as a child.

Julia Sauer doesn't seem to have written much, which is a pity--just Fog Magic and another book called The Light at Tern Rock, which I've never read, but which is briefly described here at Kaylee's Child Lit Blog. It was a Newbery Honor book in 1952. So only two books, but both of them stickered. Why weren't there more? What was Julia's story? Why has no-one written a wikipedia entry about her?  update from July 2024--there is now a wikipedia page for her, and she wrote three books.

The Year We Disappeared, a Father Daughter Memoir

I'm not alone in choosing to review this new Young Adult book for Nonfiction Monday--Becky and Jen have already done so. But it merits in depth coverage, so what the heck.

The Year We Disappeared (Bloomsbury, 2008, 271 pages in the ARC I read) is a memoir told in alternating chapters by Cylin Busby and her father, John. It describes with gripping immediacy the year they left normal life behind for a dystopian hell, and then escaped into a new life in rural Tennessee. Their journey began when Cylin was nine, in August of 1979, when her father's jaw gets shot off. Literally. John Busby was a police officer in Falmouth, Massachusetts, who had antagonized men who would stop at nothing. He lives through their attempt to kill him, undergoing a hellish reconstructive process, but the fact remains that they want him dead, and that his family is also at risk.

Once a pleasant home with lots of freedom, Cylin's home becomes a prison: "An eight-foot fence, a vicious dog, no visitors besides cops, the constant threat that some might want to do harm to us." On top of this, her life at school collapses. There is little hope in this messed-up world that justice will prevail, and for John, the desire to take revenge into his own hands is a constant threat to himself and his family. Plus the town of Falmouth is running out of money--all the police security, fence installation, savage dogs, etc. are quite expensive. Escape to a new anonymous life is the only answer.

This is gripping stuff, vividly described, and not for the faint of heart. It should appeal greatly to those who like dystopian fiction, and to lovers of true crime stories. But I was left wondering how on earth it was decided that this would be a Young Adult book (a question Jen also touches on). I kept expecting the family to disappear into their new lives much sooner than they did, but it wasn't until p 246 of the 271 pages that they arrived in Tennessee. A more accurate title might have been something like The Year of Hell We Endured Before We Disappeared. Because this is a YA book, I was anticipating the chance to read about Cylin's teenage years and her family regrouping. So I felt a tad cheated, in a way that I would not have if this had been given to me labeled an Adult Book.

This is not to say that teenagers won't enjoy this book--I bet there are lots who will. But, with its graphic violence, and what amounts to a victory for the bad guys (for the moment at least), it is not for the faint of heart.

As well as the two reviews from today linked to at the top, there's an earlier review here at the Reading Zone.

And here's the link to Nonfiction Monday, for the full roundup of today's non-fiction books, including many books that are not The Year We Disappeared!

Why I didn't get many books read this weekend

A while ago, we demolished an old shed and built a tori (the Japanese gate at the front of the disaster area below that is unfortunately not all the way in the picture but will be once it is all done). This summer, we built the pergola part. And now, we are transforming the rock and weed strewn place where the shed and its foundation were into a pleasant place to sit.

Saturday morning:



On Saturday we bashed away the large piece of concrete under the tori and hauled it off into the woods. We began moving rocks. Very large rocks.

Sunday morning:


On Sunday we moved rocks around some more, got rid of all the weeds, and began putting the bricks in.

Monday morning:


And here we are. At least it looks now as someone is trying to do something about it! And I'm sure it will all be done by our party next weekend. If we can find more bricks somewhere in the Deep Woods that lie beyond our woods. At a dollar a brick, I'm not buying them. Or we could ask every guest to bring a brick with them, and we can write their name on it with a felt tip, creating one of those memorial brick surfaces that you see so often these days.

The little white building that is off to the right is our outhouse. It is a three holer, hanging over the edge of a stone wall, for easy cleanup.

Which Jane Austen character are you?

Here is a rather nice which Jane Austen character are you quiz. It is possible, of course, that I liked it because I ended up as Elizabeth Bennet...