Bones of Faerie, by Janni Lee Simner

Bones of Faerie, by Janni Lee Simner (Random House 2009, YA, 256 pp)

"I had a sister once," Liza's story begins. "She was a beautiful baby, eyes silver as moonlight off the river at night. From the hour of her birth she was long-limbed and graceful, faerie-pale hair clear as glass from Before, so pale you could almost see through to the soft skin beneath.

My father was sensible man. He set her out on the hillside that very night...." And fifteen year- old Liza sneaks out to find her sister, but all that is left are baby Rebecca's cracked and bloody bones.

Twenty years ago, a war between humans and the faerie world had brought cataclysm to both. In a small village, a handfuls of human survivors eke out a fearful existence in a world of deadly flora--trees and brambles can kill, poison ivy is a predator, and even dandelions have teeth. Liza, surrounded since birth by vegetative nightmares, has never known any other world, and her father works diligently to keep any taint of magic from his community. Rebecca, born with the physical traits of faerie, could not be tolerated, and had to die.

A few weeks later, Liza's mother is gone too, escaping from the village to almost certain death. And Liza is beginning to acquire magic herself. In mortal fear of her father, whose beatings are already terrible, Liza flees from home, hoping to find her mother.

Her friend Matthew, his own family killed in a most terrible way years before, follows her. As they travel, she finds that Matthew is not the quite boy he has seemed all his life, and the world the Liza encounters holds much more hope for people and magic than Liza had dreamed. But first she must follow her mother into the land of faerie itself, and learn the true horror that the war brought to both realms, and she must face as well the dark shadow that journeys with her (this was a surprising sub-plot, that I won't say more about because it's a spoiler, but I liked it lots).

Pretty exciting stuff, with a great premise (post-apocalyptic earth meets faerie magic--how cool is that), and great characters. I found Liza's narration convincing and engrossing. The world is wonderfully realized, with survivals from our familiar landscapes and lifestyles made strange by their setting in the jungle of hate-filled flora.

I have only two quibbles. The first is that Liza's magic, which begins as chance visions in reflections, seems to grow and grow during the course of the book, until I wasn't exactly clear about what her powers entailed, and she became just a bit too gifted to convince. My second quibble is that I wish it had taken about 100 more pages to tell the story--it was all so interesting I wanted more! The back story of the war never became clear to me, the relationships between humans and faeries, in the past and the present, could have been explored in greater depth, and many of the walk-on characters didn't get as much attention as I would have liked.

On the other hand, the sharp focus on Liza's point of view, and the impetus that keeps moving her forward before the reader can settle down and hear some back story, are deliberate choices that keep the story riveting. And these are all issues that Liza herself would probably like to know more about. Perhaps in another book...

Here are other reviews, at Otherwhere Book Reviews, Fantasy Book Critic, and The Puck in the Midden.

Waiting on Wednesday-- The Princess and the Bear

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of reading The Princess and the Hound, by Mette Ivie Harrison. It was a pleasure, except (spoiler alert) I had one considerable complaint. As I wrote in an earlier post, "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."

Now we get to find out what happens with Beatrice and the Bear! I am very curious. How much of her hound self will Beatrice retain in human form? How much Bear will the Bear still have now that he is human?

The Princess and the Bearcomes out on April 28, 2009. Here's what the blurb on Amazon says:

"He was once a king, turned into a bear as punishment for his cruel and selfish deeds.

She was a once a princess, now living in the form of a hound.

Wary companions, they are sent—in human form—back to a time when magic went terribly astray. Together they must right the wrongs caused by this devastating power—if only they can find a way to trust each other.

But even as each becomes aware of an ever-growing attraction, the stakes are rising and they must find a way to eliminate this evil force—or risk losing each other forever."

Waiting on Wednesday, in the words of Reviewer X, is a community book lusting effort started by Jill over at Breaking the Spine.

The Top Ten Books of Magical Spells

Over at the Guardian today there's a fascinating list of the top ten grimoires (books of magical spells), real ones, not ones from fiction. I have read none of them, but here's the one that looks most useful to me professionally, as an archaeologist:

"Grimoires purporting to have been written by a legendary St Cyprian (there was a real St Cyprian as well) became popular in Scandinavia during the late 18th century, while in Spain and Portugal print editions of the Libro de San Cipriano included a gazetteer to treasure sites and the magical means to obtain their hidden riches."

I have several colleagues whose skill in finding archaeological sites borders on the miraculous...perhaps this is their secret. Or perhaps, like Professor Calculus in The Seven Crystal Balls (a Tintin book which I am currently reading to my boys), they dowse for sites.

My favorite fictional book of magic would have to be The Book of Three (Lloyd Alexander), but the one I think I would most like to read would be the one behind the clock in The Dark is Rising (Susan Cooper). Anyone else have a favorite?

Following a preamble about my day, an introduction to a new blog to love, and a tip of the hat to an old(er) friend

I just got the Love Your Blog Award from Aerin at In Search of Giants, which provided a much needed lift on a sticky evening--the sort with blood, broken glass (the two are unrelated--the blood came from the nose of my five year old's erstwhile best friend--will said friend be able to forgive? will said friend's mother take the apologetic call I made in a forgiving spirit?), rejected suppers, and assorted colds (although nothing went wrong at work). So anyway, it was nice to be loved.



Fortunately there is a new blog to quickly pass the award onto before anyone else does--The Enchanted Inkpot, where, if you head over now, you can read a fascinating entry on fantasy in Asia by Cindy Pon.

And I'd also like to pass it on to The Spectacle, another blog by fantasy/speculative fiction writers, which I have been enjoying very much!

And now I have to go watch my five year old's pet scrubbing brush (ala Traction Man, for those who know that lovely picture book) have his swimming lesson in the bathroom sink.

VOYA's list of 33 best Sci Fi, Fantasy, and Horror for teens

Here is VOYA's list of last year's thirty-three best science-fiction, fantasy, and horror titles for teens. VOYA is a library magazine ("the Voice of Youth Advocates"). Last year, incidentally, includes a bit of 2009.

Not surprisingly, there are many familiar titles on the list (Graveyard Book, Hunger Games, Battle of the Labyrinth), but it was nice to see a few books that haven't gotten much recognition. One of these, whose inclusion will make several people I know (co-panelists for the Cybils) very happy, is The Unnameables, by Ellen Booraem.

It's also interesting to see what didn't get included...

Amd continuing this line of thought, over at Wands and Worlds, Sheila has just posted a rather more in depth discussion of book lists and book buzz and undiscovered gems.

Fortune's Folly, by Deva Fagan

If you are looking for a lovely new book to give a ten year old girl (or the right sort of boy) I am happy to recommend Fortune's Folly, by Deva Fagan (coming April 14, from Henry Holt, 257 pages in ARC form).

Once Fortunata's father made the most beautiful shoes in all the land. But when her mother died, the fairies that he believed helped him in his work left, and now the things he makes are laughable. Rather than stay in their home city, becoming poorer and poorer as the market for ridiculous shoes drys up around them, Fortunata and her father hit the road. Their path leads them to a group of travelling performers, and almost before she knows what's happened to her, Fortunata finds herself selling fake fortunes....and being rather good at it.

To good, in fact. The truly unpleasant leader of the troupe is so impressed with her skills that he traps her into telling the fortune of Prince Leonarto himself. The words come tumbling out of her mouth, telling of a witch, a white horse, a wondrous sword, a princess in danger, and the most beautiful pair of shoes ever made. If her "prophesy" comes true, Leonarto will be able to assume the kingship. If it is proven false, Fortuna's father will be killed.

And so Leonarto and Fortunata head out on a journey to make a fairy tale come true, the prince believing in the prophesy, the fortune teller desperate to make it happen. What she doesn't know is that she will have to contend with more than simple human evil on their journey, and what she didn't foresee was that she would fall in love with the prince herself...

This is a delightful story, told with charm and verve. It's not a fairy tale retelling, exactly, although there are plenty of allusions to well-know stories, and there's no overt magic in it, although the reader is left wondering if Fortunata really can see the future...but it will make fans of fairy tale retellings feel right at home. I liked Fortunata a lot, and I was happy to cheer her onward as she persevered in her quest (Leonarto never quite became real to me, although he is rather sweet).

And it ends with a pair of shoes that I confess I would rather like, although I just don't know when I would ever wear them:

"A pale blue, like cornflowers, but deeper and more pure. Silver braiding edged each graceful curve; even the laces ended in delicate silver tassels. They were the most lovely pair of shoes I had ever seen."

These are officially my favorite pair of fictional shoes, beating out Maria Merryweather's boots in The Little White Horse.

Amazon says this is a young adult book, but Amazon is wrong- it's for ages ten and up. Really. The back of the book says so. Here's another review at Kidliterate, and you can read the first chapter for yourself at Deva Fagan's website.

Horrid Henry

For a couple of years, I've been vaguely aware that, over in the UK, children have been reading and loving a series of books featuring a boy nicknamed "Horrid Henry," written by Francesca Simon, and illustrated by Tony Ross. Friends there have recommended them to me, I've seen them on lists of books nominated for the British children's choice awards, and I've seen that sometimes Horrid Henry books have been the winners (Horrid Henry and the Abominable Snowman won the Galaxy Award in 2008, and Horrid Henry Robs the Bank is on the 2009 short list) . What I hadn't seen, here in the United States, were the books themselves (on my trips to England, mostly I am looking in used bookstores for books for me).


But this has now changed (um, not the part about me, which is still true). As of April 1, 2009, the first four (of sixteen) Horrid Henry books are available in the US! And my eight-year old and I have read them.

These books are:
Horrid Henry
Horrid Henry Tricks the Toothfairy
Horrid Henry's Stinkbomb
Horrid Henry and the Mega Mean Time Machine


In a nutshell, Henry is a Bad Child. Any adjective that you can think of that would fit a bad child (rude, stubborn, picky, obnoxious, selfish, etc) could be applied to the boy. His little brother, however, is Perfect. Henry butts heads with the world (which he often finds not to his taste), his family, his teacher and classmates, and just about everyone he comes into contact with, in stories that are funny in a slightly un-nice, slapsticky way. For instance, Henry uses other campers' tent pegs to start a campfire, which would never have occurred to a Good Child, such as myself.



Yet despite the Horrid things Henry does, he is smart, and funny, and (almost) likable...My son (being, on the whole, eager to please), was somewhat taken aback, but none the less enjoyed the books. At 80-90 pages, with lots of black and white illustrations, these are great for the youngish independent reader.

Reviewing this series is tricky. It is easy to say "children will love the subversive wit" "children will be delighted by Henry's antics" etc, but what I really want to talk about is Henry's parents and what they are doing wrong, and what I would do if Henry and his brother ("Perfect Peter") were my children. But I realize that this is not the point. So I will fall back on "I am sure that American kids will read these books with just as much enjoyment as the children over in the UK on whom they have already been tested..." or something like that.



For more about Horrid Henry, and to read a sample story (Horrid Henry Tricks the Toothfairy, which is a very good one), here's the publisher's website- Sourcebooks.

"I Am Still a Bunny" by Ole Risom (not)

Minh Le of Bottom Shelf Books and Farida of Saints and Spinners are collaborating on a unique blog contest: Unnecessary Children's Book Sequels that Never Were.

Here is my entry:

"I Am Still a Bunny" by Ole Risom. We've already spent one fun-filled year with Nicholas the Bunny. Now the cute rabbit takes another trip through the seasons, in which he continues to be a passive, isolated observer of the pageant of life. "In spring, I watch other animals making friends." Children will be comforted by the fact that flowers still bloom, leaves still fall, and Nicholas is still watching them.

Tell me you weren't dying to know what didn't happen to Nicholas next.

I feel this sequel is so unnecessary that the same cover can be used again:



This is actually one of my favorite picture books of all time. Would that more of us were like Nicholas.

Hilary McKay, however, does not share my opinion. Here is her description (from The Exiles):

"Pheobe had decided on...a story about a rabbit named Nicholas who lived, unnaturally, in a hollow tree. In spring this animal watched the flowers grow; in summer he spoke once, briefly, to a bee; in autumn he detachedly observed the falling of the leaves; and in winter, with the first deep snow, he put on striped pajamas and went to bed.

And died of boredom, thought Naomi, discarding Nicholas."

Either McKay did not look at the book before writing this, or the UK edition is different. Two things are wrong in this synopsis...

Waiting on Wednesday--Sacred Scars, by Kathleen Duey and thoughts on cliffhanging

Reaching the end of Kathleen Duey's great book, Skin Hunger, is tantamount to galloping along with the rest of your buffalo herd and then, whoops! You've just been driven over a cliff, and suddenly you are falling....This is perhaps a bad metaphor, but "cliffhanger" doesn't do this ending justice.

Anyway. The sequel to Skin Hunger, Sacred Scars (A Resurrection of Magic, Book 2) will be out August 4, 2009, and can be pre-ordered now! I am glad to know in advance what I will be re-reading on August 2nd.

Another cliffhanger that I read this past year was The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness. But that was more of the author yanking the reader's chain by introducing the cliffhanger in the last few paragraphs. In the more nuanced version, it is clear that the writer has to end somewhere because there are limits (Skin Hunger and The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss, being examples of this. Waxing metaphorical again, I found reaching the ending of later more like giving in and going to bed at three in the morning, leaving half of the book unread. Perhaps this more gentle reaction on my part stems from knowing where the main character is going to end up, although not knowing how or why).

Ideally, of course, every book should give closure. Megan Whalen Turner, for instance, manages to make every book of her Queen's Thief series End, while making each one a continuation of what came before. Another book I read recently, Laini Taylor's Blackbringer, Ends, while making it clear that there is room for more (Silksinger, coming soon).

But I am sure that Kathleen Duey and Patrick Rothfuss both felt rather cliffhung themselves, and will be very glad themselves when the books are finished. I am not angry, nor do I cast blame. I just want the next books....(I do not claim to know what Patrick Ness thinks. I am still sore).

Timeslip Tuesday- The Devil's Arithmetic

This week's Timeslip Tuesday book (it was supposed to be last week's, but things happened) is The Devil's Arithmetic, by Jane Yolen (1988). In modern-day New York, a girl named Hannah is dragging her feet about going to her family's Passover Seder. She's tired of her extended family, and their constant remembering--she knows her grandfather survived a concentration camp, but his rants about the Nazis are nothing more to her than an embarrassment. But when she opens the front door, to let the prophet Elijah in, her life changes. Now she is Chaya, living in a Polish village in 1942, and the Nazis have their concentration camps up and running.

All too soon they arrive in Chaya's village. When the Nazis round the villagers up and cram them into boxcars, the girl from the future knows she is going to have to try to survive some of the worst horrors imaginable. When she returns to the future, she, too, has memories--of death, of friendships blooming in the most unlikely places, of the blue numbers tattooed on her aunt's arm.

Yolen does a fine job of portraying the hellishness of a concentration camp, keeping her description just bearable enough for a young reader to keep reading. And she does a fine job in telling of the importance of remembering the past. I wish, though, that she'd given us a bit more of the characters. They are almost truly real, but to me they were always just a tad overshadowed by the Larger Messages. I had read this one years ago, and did not remember caring for it over much--this may have been why. Still, speaking as one who advocates the teaching of history through fiction, this is a great middle-grade book from which to learn about the Holocost.

Timeslip-wise, it's clear that the time travelling is so that Hannah can Learn, and that weakens the magic of it. So although this book has many good points, it isn't one I'd recommend as a sterling example of Timeslip Genre as such.

This is my 22nd Timeslip review-when I get to 25 I'll make a list!

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.