The Name of the Wind

I just finished reading The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, Day 1), by Patrick Rothfuss (Daw 2007, 662 pp). I am sad that I have turned the last page of the story, and will have to wait for book 2, but so happy to be able to say--Wow! Go read this book, or put it in the hands of any fantasy loving teenager asap! It was great!

It starts in an inn, miles from anywhere of importance. It starts slowly, and darkly, with the innkeeper obsessively polishing his bottles in a too-often empty room. Outside, weird metallic spider things that shouldn't be there are attacking people. On the road, drawing closer to the inn, is the Chronicler. He has heard a rumor about this innkeeper, and is coming to find his story. Because the innkeeper is actually Kvothe the Bloodless, the Kingkiller, of whom a hundred stories are told. The Chronicler is about to be told the truth.

Kvothe's story starts with a happy childhood, travelling with loving parents, performing with them, learning chemistry, physics, math, and magic from a wise old man who has joined them on the road. He is beginning to dream of the University, where he might go to read all the books in the best library in the world, and learn for himself the name of the wind.

I don't want to go on describing the plot--why spoil a good story? Very bad things happen, good things happen. There is a vegetarian dragon, the best Magical University I've been in outside of Earthsea, and lots of music. There's beautiful, and not very kind girl, who has secrets. There are chemical accidents, mysterious deaths, underground rooms (that we don't find out enough about here in book one argh), young Kvothe is a great character, and....

There were, it must be said, bits that dragged a tad, which could perhaps have used a bit of editing (I'm not sure, for instance, that the vegetarian dragon added much). And the girl character. I'm not sure what I think about her, but I'm willing to suspend judgement until I find out more.

But wow. It took me longer to get to this book than planned, because I had to spend several days watching my dear husband reading it, drawing farther and farther away from his loving family with each page...here is his reaction: "Didn't you get p....off at the end when you realized you weren't going to find out how the story ends?" He really liked it. Upon reading this, he requests that I add that he "has no patience with fantasy writing that is a mere collection of clichéd furniture with no story to tell."

In short, here is a great book about a teenaged protagonist, a fantasy that is fresh and exciting with no magic talismans (talismen?) or Quests, which leaves the reader dying for more (poor Patrick Rothfuss has gotten some nasty email as a result--he, too, would like to have Book 2 written).

The Name of the Wind is on this year's Nebulla shortlist (that's how I heard of it), and, apparently, would have won the Locus Award for Best Debut Fantasy if the votes of Locus suscribers hadn't been counted twice.

I don't exactly like the American cover, so here's the UK one. I don't exactly like that either.

Lots of dead bodies, some bad dreams, a hound, and a family of vicarage children--my week in review

I've read more books this week than I have time to review, and rather than have this week's reading vanish into the Mists of Time, here are my reactions. They were all good reads, by which I mean books that made me turn the pages at a brisk clip and which followed me around the house, as opposed to the books that sit forgotten in forlorn loneliness on the windowsill, kitchen counter, or bedside table. But they weren't quite good enough to make me want to leave off working outside yesterday to come in and write about in detail.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan (Delacorte, 2009. 320pp, YA). Mary lives in a fenced village, with uncountable zombies trying to get in. The horrible claustrophobia of it all is rather effective, as is the horrible uncertainty of not knowing what is outside--are there other villages? Is there really an ocean? Is there a point to continuing life in what might be a dead end? There are so many zombies, however, that they began to overwhelm me (as well as sundry villages). And I thought there were too many questions left hanging, although all the loose ends make me anxious for the sequel...As a member of Team Unicorn, I tried to imagine what the book would be like with Bad Unicorns--The Forest of Hoofs and Horns. Although I did not switch my allegiance, I concluded that zombies were a better choice.

Fade, by Lisa McMann (2009, Simon Pulse, 256pp, YA). I found this just as page turning as its prequel, Wake, although not quite as satisfying. Janie and Cabal are now doing their best to make a go of life as a couple, while trying to help the police snare a suspected sexual predator at their school. And all the dreaming she's been doing is taking a toll on Janie. Her eyesight is failing, her hands growing old before their time. I have one major criticism of this one--Janie's dreams seem to have been absolutely no help in cracking the case. Any undercover high school operative could have done what she did, so what was the point?

The Bone Magician, by F.E. Higgins (2008, Feiwel & Friends, 288pp, YA)
is one of those stories that I vaguely feel are ubiquitous about a boy living in a seedy city making a living under unwholesome and un-nurturing conditions. There's a creepy killer on the loose, and creepy magic being practiced. A Bone Magician and his assistant are making the dead talk...For much of this book, I kept wondering when things would Start Happening, and Pin, the young boy, would leave the city and set out to find the truth about his father, and discover magic of his own, or something, but it stayed firmly put in the stench-filled streets where the story begins. After a while, I decided this didn't matter--the atmosphere, personalities, and magic carry the book along quite nicely. This is a "paraquel" to The Black Book of Sequels, and it appears that the two casts of characters will meet in the next book....

The Princess and the Hound, by Mette Ivie Harrison (HarperTeen 2007 416pp, YA) was an impulse library pick-up. I'd heard good things about it, but hadn't read it. A prince with animal speaking magic (which he must keep secret, or be burned alive) must marry a princess from neighboring kingdom. The princess comes with a hound, her only close companion...

Spoiler

Here is a bit of complaint. I think that when an author expects me to invest in getting to know a character (Princess Beatrice) it is not fair to turn her back into the hound she really was and send her off into an unnatural relationship with a bear.

The Vicarage Children, by Lorna Hill (originally published in 1961, reissued by Girls Gone By Publishers in 2008, Middle Grade). Kind of like The Four Story Mistake, set in a Northumbrian vicarage in the middle of the 20th century (although Enright is a much better writer than Hill). The vicarage has no modern conveniences and a leaky roof (although it does have a Centurian's grave in the garden). The family (mother, father, four children) is very poor, and much of the story concerns the issues of the oldest sister, who does not like being a pretty teenager with no money, and suffers from the perennial "I need a party frock" desperation that plagues so many fictional impoverished girls in post-war England (although I guess 1961 isn't really all that post-war, qua post-war). The middle sister, the narrator, is a pleasantly interesting child, and the sense of place is lovely.

So these were my pleasure reading this past week. And yesterday I started reading The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, Day 1)...that one is definitely going to get its own review.

This year's official Oddest Book Title is...

The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais.

You can read more about it here, and see the books it beat. My personal favorite is The Large Sieve and Its Applications: Arithmetic Geometry, Random Walks and Discrete Groups. It sounds rather soothing, somehow. Not like those nasty planned walks.

Now I am wondering if my sieve is large enough for me to try this at home...

Radio interview with Alan Garner

Just a quick post to offer this link to a recent radio interview with Alan Garner (author of The Weirdstone of Brisingaman and The Owl Service): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00j6xxz

Here's the BBC's description of it: John Waite meets Alan Garner, author of the book that helped shape Waite's own childhood, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, to discuss his life and writing career.

He discovers how Garner had his mouth scrubbed with carbolic soap at primary school to rid him of his thick Cheshire accent, what happened when he heard himself declared dead - twice - and how nothing has influenced him more strongly than his artisan ancestors who have lived in the area for centuries.

John also hears from Garner fans including academic Charles Butler and novelist Philip Pullman.

Waiting on Wednesday--The Magic Thief: Lost

Here is a present I am going to buy myself on May 12th:

The Magic Thief: Lost, by Sarah Prineas.


Or I might well pre-order a signed copy (which you can do here).

I looovveeddd Prineas' first book, The Magic Thief (a Cybils short list; here's my review), and it makes me so happy to think that I'll have book number two in my hot little hands in just a few weeks! And hopefully book number 3, The Magic Thief: Found, not too terribly long afterwards...it's just recently been copy-edited.

(as well as liking the words inside, I think these are very handsome books qua books. They are nice to hold and look at...friendly yet lavish)

The Hugo Awards Shortlist

Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Morrow; Atlantic UK)
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; HarperVoyager UK)
Saturn's Children by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi (Tor)

Wow! Three directly marketed as YA, one (Anathem) that features teenagers, one (Graveyard Book) that's for middle-grade readers on up, and, um, then there's Saturn's Children, about which Publisher's Weekly said "Sex oozes from every page of this erotic futuristic thriller..."

I also find it interesting that something that is as utterly un-sciency as The Graveyard Book made it onto the list for the most prestigious science fiction award.

Here's the rest of the ballot.

Watersmeet, by Ellen Jensen Abbott

Watersmeet, by Ellen Jensen Abbott (Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books, 341 pages, coming out April 1), is a page-turner. For those who like Hard Data, I offer this--I read the first 120 pages in a toxic, noisy environment-- my son's 45 minute swim lesson (I hate the smell of chlorine), and I was so engrossed that I completely abandoned my habitual practice of checking every few minutes to see if he was drowning (he wasn't).

Here's the story. Humans have staked out settlements in a land of "monsters"--centaurs, dwarves, fauns, and the like--and have met these monsters with hatred. The non-human creatures return the favor. Within the settlement walls, hatred also runs hot for those who fall short of this culture's physical ideal for humanity. One such is Abisina, outcast from birth because of her dark hair and skin. She thinks she knows hatred pretty well, but when a charismatic leader arrives at her village, and preaches death to all outcasts, she has to revise her opinion. Especially as she sees this leader for the hideous white worm that he is (literally).

Fleeing from the savage attacks of her neighbors, and the horror of her mother's death at their hands, Abisina sets out to find the father she never knew, to a place she does not know how to find--Watersmeet. On her journey beyond the mountains, she must learn to trust and value the native peoples of these lands. Without the help of two dwarves, she would never have lived to find her father. And when she meets her father, she must discard every vestige of her ingrained prejudices in order to be truly his daughter. He is the leader of the united folk of Watersmeet, who must now stand against the White Worm who threatens to destroy all that is beautiful and peaceful. He is also more than simply human...

Ok--this perhaps sounds like an old plot. Outcast girl sets off on a quest, helped by magical creatures, and finds a realm of the blessed, her lost father, and powers she never knew she had. But it's a good framework to hang a story on, when the author makes her main character someone to care about and respect, as Abbott does. I was, at first, a tad doubtful about the mythological creatures, but was pleased to find them interesting and varied--they avoid being cliches. And (as I mentioned above) Abbott knows how to tell a page-turning story. I would be happy to read more books set in her world.

I find the book's cover striking and compelling. It has the look of one of those edgy, dark, ya fantasies which are currently in vogue, and perhaps, given that in-vogueness, this was the intent. I did not, however, find the book itself as dark and edgy as all that (I could, of course, have become Hardened to it all), so I don't think the cover goes with the book (and in fact older teens judging the book by its cover might be a smidge disappointed).

While Watersmeet has dark moments, they do not last long, nor are they pitch black. Although the story begins with hatred and violence, it is terrible without being overly graphic, and although there is a very vivid battle scene, Abbott manages to convey the horror of it without recourse to an overload of gore. My feeling was that this book is on the young side of YA-- I can imagine this book being adored by fantasy loving seventh and eighth-graders, and even many sixth-graders (so I've put a middle grade tag on it, as well as YA).

Ellen Jensen Abbott has created a Teacher's Guide to accompany the book, which touches on such topics as war, prejudice, symbolism, the construction of the past and the construction of identity. Interesting stuff.

And here's another review, a glowing one, at Shelf Elf.

Watersmeet is Ellen Jensen Abbott's first published book, and is the first book I've read for the '09 Debut Author's Challenge. I'm hoping to read all the middle grade and ya fantasy/science fiction debut books that I can find (here's my list so far--please let me know if I'm missing anything!).

Why does What Katy Did do what it does in the UK?

About six years ago I started conversing online with British lovers of children's books (a mailing list called Girlsown). Obviously some differences were to be expected, but I was very taken aback by how highly What Katy Did (Susan Coolidge, 1872) is regarded by many British readers. They love it over there. Just yesterday it was featured Lucy Mangan's Book Corner at The Guardian yesterday, a column where she recommends books that should be included in a "brilliant" children's library.

Fondness for Katy, however, is not a trait shared by all British girls. Here is the reaction of Lucy Mangan's sister: "...she hurled it across the room shouting "Katy did nothing!" before stalking off to build a working model of a nuclear reactor in Meccano behind the sofa."

What Katy Did didn't do much for me either, although I would never throw a book across the room, and I have even gone back and re-read it. Only once, though. Whereas Little Women (which came out just a few years earlier, from the same publishers) I can practically recite. The plot of Katy is just too blah-ly Victorian--spunky, independent girl disobeys, is punished with a bad injury, and after attending "the school of pain" is all gentle niceness.

Here is a random cover from one of the many reprints. Guess what is going to happen to the swing (although it does not appear to be moving, which is odd):


I do not number among my American acquaintances anyone who is particularly fond of Katy. But why is she so beloved over there? (It is everywhere--any used book store in the British Isles will have at least three copies). Here's my theory of the moment (tongue in cheek): Katy, perhaps, is seen as the quintessentially bumptuous American who gradually acquires the culture and dignity of a Brit--at first a source of tolerant amusement, she later becomes a source of self-affirmation by embodying valued National characteristics. Or possibly there was just a really, really good marketing campaign, that spanned centuries. I shall ask, and report back.

(disclosure: Reader, I married one. Someone from England, that is. He has never read "What Katy Did," nor does he want to).

My wants list, or, why bother teaching handwriting

Jen Robinson has another of her lovely “reviews that made me want the book” posts up. Inspired by this, I am posting, just for the heck of it, my working wants list (this is different from my typed wants list, which I give to people who might be wanting to buy me presents, of whom there are, sadly, too few). It is a dynamic, living thing—you can see that what was once a nice place to doodle while on hold, down at the bottom of the page, is now a palimpsest of book want. Thanks, everyone, who reviewed or mentioned the books on the list! I’m sure I’ll enjoy reading them, just as soon as I’ve cleared out the backlog that resulted from last week's trigger-happy library book requesting.


This is one of those pictures that gets big when you click on it, if anyone actually wants to know what I want (although my birthday is not till January).

I really draw better than this! But stressful telephoning makes for less nice drawing. However, this is about as good as my writing gets.

My son's third grade teacher recently told us that our son should, for the moment, just learn to type, and they seem to have given up on cursive. I, myself, was taught beautiful handwriting, which is clear from the specimen above. At least I don't have to worry about anyone reading my high school diaries!

A Finder's Magic -- great bedtime fantasy for the young reader

A Finder's Magic, by Philippa Pearce, illustrated by Helen Craig (Candlewick, 2009, originallypublished in 2006 in the UK, 121 pages with lots of black and white pictures).

A small boy named Till has gone to bed distraught--his beloved dog Bess slipped her leash, and now she is gone. The next day he wakes up early, and drawn by a strong compulsion, heads out to the garden gate. There he finds "an odd-looking little old man, hardly bigger than himself, and dressed all anyhow."

The strange little man is a Finder, with all a Finder's magic, and he is determined to help Till find Bess. So Till sets of through the garden gate, magicked by the Finder into a day that isn't quite real, and heads back to the meadow where he last saw his dog.

There the Finder uses his arcane skills to question all the possible witnesses--duck and heron, mole and cat, and the two little old ladies who live at the meadow's edge. By slow steps and riddles a picture of Bess's last few minutes before she was lost emerge. But the clues seem point to the strange Finder himself, and Till worries that he will never see his dog again.

Part mystery, part fantasy, A Finder's Magic makes a great book to read at bedtime to a 6 to 8 year old. Its slow pace and gentle progress make it a soothing read with good stopping points (from a grown-up's point of view), while the urgency of Till's need to find Bess and the strange way the Finder sets about his work keep the story interesting. It's not particularly the sort of book that a grown-up will curl up with herself (see Becky's review), but it is one my 8-year old son asked me or his father to keep on reading all the nights it was his bedtime book.

This is the last book Philippa Pearce (author of Tom's Midnight Garden) wrote before she died in 2006. She wrote it for her own two grandchildren, and the illustrator, Helen Craig (of Angelina Ballerina fame), is their other grandmother.

The latest on lead in books

Here's the latest AP article about lead and libraries...

But what are used book stores doing?

Silent Echoes for Timeslip Tuesday

Intrigued by the description of this book over at Book Moot, I sought out Silent Echoes, by Carla Jablonski (Razorbill, 2007, 344pp) for this week's Timeslip Tuesday book.

In late 19th-century New York, sixteen-year old Lucy and her father make their living through Spiritualism, with Lucy playing the role of the medium. It is not much of a living, but preying on the rich and gullible keeps them from poverty, and Lucy has the patter down pat.

"She shut her eyes and went back into her trance routine. She threw in a few moans to cover the rumbling of her empty stomach.

"Is anyone there who wold like to make contact?" she called out. "Spirits! Speak to me!"

"Help me," a voice replied.

Lucy sat bolt upright in her chair, her skin suddenly cold with shock.

"Help me," the voice repeated. A voice not her own. A girl's voice, a voice that didn't belong to anyone in the room. "Why won't anyone help me?"

At first, it is this "spirit" who helps Lucy. Lucy's predictions, based on the knowledge of the future that it shares with her, bring in more money than she and her father have ever made before, and the attentions of a rich, young man...

Gradually, Lucy begins to understand that this voice is not a ghostly spirit. Somehow, she has heard Lindsay, a modern New York girl, desperate for help. Her alcoholic mother and violent step-father are making Lindsay's life intolerable, and things are about to get worse for her. Although contact with Lindsay has improved Lucy's life, hearing voices lands Lindsay a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

When the girls realize that they have forged a bond across time, Lucy in the past begins to see what she must do to help Lindsay, while learning how best to live her own life.

Timeslip-wise, there was one thing I found strange. The girls are able to hear each other when they are in the same physical place, which is fine. But then newspapers from the present slip backwards into the past, inexplicably...

I found Lindsay's life in the present--her problems, her actions with regard to Lucy--fascinating. Lucy's side of things I found less believable, as she didn't seem to know all that much about life in her own time and place. Lucy was made even less convincing at times when the author seemed to use her as an audience for instructional digressions into life for poor women in the nineteenth-century. I don't mind in the least historical fiction that instructs, but it is tricky, I think, to slip the instruction in so subtly that it does not distract.

Still, an enjoyable read.

This is my 21st Timeslip Tuesday review! I'm happy to link to any other timeslip reviews, so let me know...

What Darwin Saw: the Journey that Changed the World

In the past few weeks, I have had the very great pleasure of reading What Darwin Saw: The Journey That Changed the World, by Rosalyn Schanzer (Smithsonian: 2009, ages 8-adult). First I read it out loud to my boys, and then again to myself. I had the great pleasure of watching my eight-year old poring over it repeatedly, and finally, I've read it a third time today. I do not remember ever being so very impressed by a non-fiction picture book in my life (I am pretty sure I mean this).

What Darwin Saw tells how young Darwin travelled around the world in the 1830s, and the strange, wonderful, and sometimes scary things he saw. It takes him home to England, where he spent the rest of his life creating a new theory of how life on earth has changed over the millenia. The book is part narration by the author, part snippets from Darwin's journals and letters, and part notes of explanation.

Maybe I loved this book so much because of the beautiful illustrations. This is a non-fiction picture book of the best kind, where what is shown is both compliment to and continuation of the words. From full-paged panoramic landscapes to close up scientific details, Schanzer has given us a huge variety of enchanting pictures to pore over and delight in (click here to see one of the most beautiful).

Maybe it was the story-line. The adventurous journey around the world, the strange things seen, the marvels that Darwin witnessed, told in large part through his own words: "We climbed up to rough mass of greenstone which crowns the summit of Bell Mountain. this rock was shattered into huge angular fragments, some appearing as if broken the day before, whilst on others, lichens had long grown. I so fully believed that this was owing to frequent earthquakes that I felt inclined to hurry from each loose pile" (page 21).

Maybe it was because Darwin makes a surprisingly great hero. Adventurous and curious, his delight in what he sees is profound. Thoughtful and determined, he is a great role model for the young (and for the rest of us too) when he comes back to England, carefully piecing together the clues on which he will build his scientific edifice (I can imagine holding him up as an example to my children when they rush through their own homework. I can imagine this having no effect....)

And I know that I loved the clear prose with which Schanzer narrates and explains Darwin's voyage and his theories about evolution. Simple enough so that an eight year old can follow, complex enough so that the adult reader does not feel patronized.

But I think that the biggest reason why I was so enraptured is that this book is a celebration of all the wonderful forms of life with which we share our planet. In Darwin's words, quoted by Schanzer, "From so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."


Schanzer, incidentally, deals with the 19th-century conflict between those who accepted evolution with those who could not reconcile the words of the Bible and Darwin's theory. She does not touch on the debates that are still on-going.

Here's a link to Schanzer talking about the evolution of her book, at I.N.K. (Interesting Non-fiction for Kids, which is a great blog).

Here's another review at Muddy Puddle Musings. I was surprised I didn't find, in the five minutes or so I had on hand to spend link-looking any other reviews, any more that were more substantial than mentions....if you reviewed this, let me know and I'll add the link!

This is my contribution to today's Non-Fiction Monday; the roundup is being hosted today by L.L. Owens.

The Dolphin Crossing, thoughts on endings and the Toothfairy, and other YA Dunkirk books

The Dolphin Crossing, by Jill Paton Walsh (first published in 1967, 134 pages).

It is the spring of 1940. The British army are in France, trying to hold back the German advance. In a small village in the east of England, two teenage boys--one from a family of land owning locals, one an evacuee from London--are making friends. Pat and his stepmother, who is expecting a baby any day, had not been given a kindly welcome when they arrived from London. Instead, they had been grudgingly given the shelter of a derelict railway carriage, surrounded by cows. John, lonely, compassionate, and a bit bored, decides that his family's unused barn would make a better place to live. Working together to make the barn habitable, the boys are glad to have something productive to do while the worry of the war drags on.

But one day, they see a line of little boats heading out to sea, toward France, and they hear the story of the British army trapped on the beaches across the channel. So John and Pat, who had never even seen the sea before he left London, set out in John's little boat, Dolphin, on the same night that Pat's sister is being born. They are determined to save as many men as they can, and for the next few days they mechanically ferry boat load after boat load of men from the beach to the offshore naval vessels. Boats next to theirs are blown up, and machine gun fire from the Germans rakes across their bow. Still they keep going, back and forth, and still there are men on the beach, waiting (and I, at this point, am sniffing a bit--Dunkirk always makes me sniff).

So much of what I know of history I learned from historical fiction, and I eagerly recommend The Dolphin Crossing to anyone who wants to learn more about the early days of World War II in England, and what happened at Dunkirk. It's also, pure and simple, a really good book. Enough characterization for those of us who like that, and enough nail biting adventure for those that like that. It is short enough so as not to be daunting, but packs a punch. I think, however, that the ending stinks and that authors who do this to their readers are not nice.

spoiler, and some talk in general of what I look for in an ending, moving on to the Tooth Fairy.

At the end, John and Pat have had to go back to England because they are running out of gas. They make it home safely, although John has been hit by gunfire, and unload their boat load of soldiers into John's kitchen. And then, after a few days in bed recovering, John learns that Pat refueled the Dolphin and took her back to France, and hasn't shown up again. And that's it. Argh. I would rather know for a fact he was dead, than have it hinted at by the author, who knows I will never find out. Imagining your own endings is not the same as having them told you by the One who Knows. When I try to imagine Pat alive somewhere down the coast, having by some miracle brought the Dolphin back safely, or perhaps picked up by another boat after he sinks the Dolphin, I feel like a kid trying to believe in the tooth fairy. This is one reason I like Tolkien, who went to great pains to make sure we know what happened to everyone at the end of The Lord of the Rings.

Jill Paton Walsh is, of course, still very much alive and still writing books, but for grownups these days, so I doubt very much that she will ever save poor Pat from his fictional limbo of presumed death.

And speaking of the Tooth Fairy, it is a very good thing that we never tried very hard to get our children to believe in it. My poor little one lost a second tooth last night, in violent and bloody circumstances (it was loose, but not quite ripe, when he received a whap in the face from his older brother). So he was promised that the Tooth Fairy would bring extra money on account of the blood. Sigh. For the second time in his life, the Tooth Fairy completely failed to remember to put anything at all under his pillow.... Bad Tooth Fairy.

The Dolphin Summer might be a bit hard to find here in the US. I am not bothering to link to the US Amazon page because it says that it is a book for babies with no copies available. However, if your library, like mine, still has its books from the 1960s (which I think is a good thing) you might be in luck (anyone in Rhode Island can get it through interlibrary loan!). There are, however, many cheap used copies available in paperback in Britain, here at Amazon UK you can buy it for two cents (plus postage).

Other Dunkirk Books:

Another excellent book about an evacuee (a teenaged girl, this time) who heads off to Dunkirk is In Spite of All Terror by Hester Burton. There is also Paul Gallico's lovely and tear-inducing The Snow Goose. And if anyone happens to have a spare copy of Dunkirk Summer, by Philip Turner, which I have never read, I would be happy to take it off your hands! It has been on my Christmas Wants List for years now, and since there are no copies available ever it probably will stay there (right alongside Words and Music, by William Mayne). For more on the unavailability of Dunkirk Summer here's a 2002 article in Collecting Books and Magazines. Of course, anyone who has a spare copy who reads that article will become strangely reluctant to send it off to a stranger...

Here's how the article describes the book:

This is perhaps the best book of the nine. It's the story of a community awakening to the full horrors of the war and of young man and a young woman realising for the first time the full possibilities of their love. For a long time, like Andy Birch, the hero, the reader comes to Darnley Mills as a stranger once more. Then the charm of the familiar places, especially All Saints Church and its rectory, and some of our old favourite characters begins to exert itself. Twenty years later it is the world that will be inherited by David, Peter and Arthur but only if the community survives Hitler and his bombs. No longer a boy, not quite a man, seventeen year old Andy faces up to his future.

Sigh. I want it.

Crystal of Discord, my very own fantasy novel (kind of)

Here it is! I randomly generated it as best I could...I am a bit disappointed with my cover art, which has nothing crystalline about it at all. Nor was it easy to find a place to put the title. Poor planning, if you ask me.


Want to create your own Fantasy Epic? Head over here, to 100 Scope Notes, to see how, and to admire other people's books...

Guest, by Rabindranath Tagore, for Poetry Friday

Guest, by Rabindranath Tagore

Lady, you have filled these exile days of mine
With sweetness, made a foreign traveler your own
As easily as these unfamiliar stars, quietly,
Coolly smiling from heaven, have likewise given me
Welcome. When I stood at this window and stared
At the southern sky, a message seemed to slide
Into my soul from the harmony of the stars,
A solemn music that said, "We know you are ours-
Guest of our light from the day you passed
From darkness into the world, always our guest."

Lady, your kindness is a star, the same solemn tune
In your glance seems to say, "I know you are mine."
I do not know your language, but I hear your melody:
"Poet, guest of my love, my guest eternally."

From Selected Poems, Translated by William Radice (Penguin Classics, 2005)

I haven't been a Poetry Friday contributor for a while, but this poem seemed to me so lovely a place to dream of, like a good book, that I couldn't resist.

(But here is the dark truth behind my choice of this lovely poem-- I have placed myself in the hands of the poetry gods. Every Friday I have been typing "random poem" into google and this is the first one I have fallen for....)

The Poetry Friday roundup this week is at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Blackbringer, by Laini Taylor

Faeries of Dreamdark: Blackbringer, by Laini Taylor (Putnam, 2007, 437 pp)

Way back in 2007, I noticed that a lot of people were saying, with great conviction, that Blackbringer was a very good book indeed (see below for specifics). But I was doubtful. There was this fairy-type person on the cover... Even though she looked fierce, and not twee at all, I was cynically unsure about the book.

Fast forward to fall, 2008. There I was on a Cybils panel with Laini, and while emailing and chatting and reading her blog, I came to realize that someone as smart and fun as she is would easily have been capable of writing as good a book as people said she did. Of course, by the time that realization came, I had a reading list of 160ish books on my hands, so Blackbringer had to wait.

Fast forward to yesterday. I finished Blackbringer, excitedly rushing toward the end, while regretting that the end was nigh. I loved it.

Just in case there is anyone reading this who hasn't read any of the many glowing reviews out there already, Blackbringer tells of an ancient evil being, released from his prison through human folly. Standing against him is a young fairy, Magpie Windwitch, and a group of rambunctiously stalwart crows. Magpie is a great heroine, smart and sassy and caring and interested in life. Sure, she has Wondrous Gifts and a Special Destiny, but these are mere accessories to the vivid person that she is. The crows are funny, teetering on the edge of farce but holding their own on this side of it. The ancient evil is an archetypal mythical awfulness, who manages to avoid being a cliche. And there are a host of other characters, filling out the story beautifully and making this world real.

I'm pretty sure Laini enjoyed tremendously the creation of her world and its people, because this the result is one of the most three-dimensional, lived-in, and cared about places I've been for ages. I felt small, Magpie-sized, while reading it, but I don't remember being told to feel this way. I'm so very glad I didn't read it back in 2007 because now I have a lot less time to wait before the sequel, Silksinger, comes out this fall! (edited to add: here's what I thought about Silksinger)

Because of knowing and liking the author, I was determined to read the book Critically, not allowing emotion to sway intellect. And indeed, there was one word that I thought might have been ill-chosen. That word is "pink." It can be found on page 115.

Blackbringer comes out in paperback (shown below) this May! It's interesting that they are now calling the series just Dreamdark, instead of Fairies of...Since I'm still a fairy sceptic, even though I loved Magpie, I find it more appealing!


There have been tons of blog reviews of Blackbringer; Laini has a comprehensive list at her place. The first I read was at Fuse #8, the most recent was from another of our Cybils panel, Em. I think Em and I would both have shortlisted Laini's book in a second! What were the 2007 people thinking????

And finally, here's a link to Shannon Hale and Laini talking to each other.

(nb: I have labeled this middle grade and YA, not because there is anything edgy, but because this is one that YA people would like too. If I had "adult" as a labeling choice, I'd add that too).

A home decorating idea for those who feel that they don't have enough books...

This (the book part, not the cat and the stair railing) is wallpaper. Perfect for all those parts of your house (the ceiling? The sloping walls of the upstairs bedrooms?) where it is impossible to put actual books.

And now the People of Ireland have also spoken...

Well, actually a panel of judges for Children's Books Ireland spoke. And they announced the shortlist for the Bistro Children's Book of the Year (as I learned over at Kid's Lit). I'm especially pleased that one of our Cybils shortlisted books made the cut--Airman, by Eoin Colfer, which is a lovely adventure story that I really do mean to review some day, and I did, after all, like it enough to help shortlist it myself. Incidentally, this is the only fantasy book on the list...Creature of the Night, by Kate Thompson, sounds like gritty urban fantasy but isn't.

The Children of Britain have spoken: the WHSmith Children's book of the year shortlist!

So over in the UK these two people named Richard and Judy, who seem to make their living (in part) by telling the Plain People of Britain what to read, picked their twenty favorite children's books. They then asked the Children of Britain to vote on their favorites, resulting in----

The WHSmith Children's Book of the Year Short List:

Dinosaurs Love Underpants by Claire Freedman, illus Ben Cort (Simon & Schuster)
Horrid Henry Robs the Bank by Francesca Simon (Orion Children's Books)
Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People by Dav Pilkey (Scholastic)
Artemis Fowl & the Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer (Puffin)
The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling (Bloomsbury)
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (Atom)

Well. I guess this is what happens when you let the children vote. I like Captain Underpants just as much as the next mother, but jeez. (I wanted to see what I would have voted for, so I looked on line for the list of the twenty books they started with, but with no luck). It is rather interesting, in an unsurprising way, that the majority are fantasy. I also wonder if this is the first short list ever in the whole history of book awards to include two books with "underpants" in their titles.

But only one of these books will be the final winner! If you are a child (it seems to be open to "all children") here is where you can go to vote for your favorite from this list, by the 27th of March.

I do not know which book I would vote for. Maybe because I've only read two of them.