6/9/14

Guest Post-- Maureen Doyle McQuerry shares the backstory of Beyond the Door

Today I'm very pleased to be welcoming Maureen Doyle McQuerry, author of the middle grade fantasy novel, Beyond the Door (Amulet 3/25/14).

Here's the blurb
"Beyond the Door, the first in the Time Out of Time duet....weaves a compelling coming-of-age story with fantasy and mythology. With his love of learning and the game of Scrabble, Timothy James feels like the only person who understands him is his older sister, Sarah, and he’s fairly certain nothing interesting will ever happen to him. But one night, while his parents and sister are away, the door opens, and mythical creatures appear in his own living room! Soon, a mystery of unparalleled proportions begins to unfold, revealing an age-old battle of Light against Dark, and Timothy must embark on a quest to prevent the Dark from controlling the future and changing the past. But he can’t complete the quest alone. Timothy has to team up with his sister and the school bully, Jessica, to face an ancient evil, and in the process, this unlikely trio discover they are each more than meets the eye."

And now, over to Maureen, who shares the backstory to the book!
 
What have I learned about the world from myth as a writer and a reader? Since writing Beyond the Door  and The Peculiars I’ve been thinking about why myth matters. Over the next week I’ll be blogging in the U.S and U.K. about six things I’ve learned from mythic stories that have inspired me. Plus there will be fun giveaways and a post by cover artist Victo Ngai! Follow the thread…

Writers are like crows. Shiny things catch our attention, and we carry them off to hoard in our secret place.  The sparklies that catch my attention might be a word, a setting, a face, a conversation partially overheard. They will not necessarily be your shiny things. I’ve learned that the things we notice say a lot about who we are.

The inspiration for Beyond the Door began on a trip to Oxford, England. Our daughter was studying there for two terms and of course we had to visit! On an overcast day, in an ancient old church, I looked up and a face was looking down at me.



He had leaves for hair, vines sprouting from his nose and mouth, and skin cracked and ridged like tree bark. A face somewhere between man and tree. What if I felt vines pushing up my throat and out my mouth? What if my joints grew stiff and birds lodged in my hair? The Greenman came to life for me that day. He was the shiny object that got me thinking about Celtic mythology, and he was the first character in Beyond the Door. I’ve always loved stories of the Wild Hunt, quests, the idea that magic might be right beyond my door. The Greenman let me play with those ideas. And before he was ever a story, I wrote about him as a poem.


                         Green Man 
               It was this way, in the heart of the forest:
green sea deep and light,
leaves like rippling water,
a steady heartbeat of silence.
               
It was this way, a mere tickle
an itching of the scalp and suddenly
every movement becomes a rustle
as tufts of hair unfurl

to leaf, a flourish of jade moustache
sprouting and curling from raw, nude
                skin. My legs and fingers swollen wood,
ridged and gray as sycamore bark. 

It was like this, a panic of birds
sorting through my hair,
animals seeking shelter in knot holes,
joints sealing and sap running like blood

           It was like this, precipitous, 
               life bursting forth in unexpected places, 
              roots seeking hold and feeding 
              capillaries, the taste of moss and humus 
              filling my mouth like song.

But a story isn’t just about an interesting character or setting, it’s about a struggle that leads to change. Every time, every story.  If these mythic characters were going to come to life, I needed a protagonist whose world would be turned upside when he encountered them. I was coordinating a program for gifted middle school students at the time, and that’s where Timothy, Sarah and Jessica came from. I wanted to write a story for those kids. The smart, quirky, love- to- read fantasy kids I taught every day. I even used the real name of their middle school in the book.

I have discovered my novels have several common threads. One of these is myth. Myth adds subtext to a story. The writer and reader join a conversation that has been whispered for centuries: Where did we come from? Where are we going? Is the world a safe place?

The amazing writer Neil Gaiman said in his speech at the mythopoeic awards, “…sometimes the best way to show people true things is from a direction that they had not imagined the truth coming.” That’s what myth does. It shows us something true in an unexpected way. And in that way, myths can be signposts to larger truths.

Here's the full schedule for the Beyond the Door Blog Tour:

UK
6/9  http://flutteringbutterflies.com/ - Beyond the Door, the backstory
 6/10 http://www.wondrousreads.com/ - first chapter extract 
6/11 www.teenlibrarian.co.uk –What I’ve learned from Myth part 1
http://liveotherwise.co.uk/makingitup  - What I’ve learned from Myth part 2  and giveaway
6/13 http://wesatdown.blogspot.com – The cover story post illustrator Victo Ngai
6/16 http://www.serendipityreviews.co.uk/ - Q and A

6/17 http://fictionfascination.blogspot.co.uk/ - Favorite books with myth that inspire me as a writer
6/10 http://middlegrademarch.com/     Cover artist Victo Ngai post, giveaway 6/11 thebookcellarx@gmail.com   What I’ve learned from Myth Part 1
6/12  http://hauntedorchid.blogspot.com  What I’ve Learned from Myth part 2
6/13  http://smack-dab-in-the-middle.blogspot.com   Interview/ give away

6/8/14

48 hour book challenge wrap-up

Though I enjoyed my multi-hour nap on Saturday, it sure wreaked havoc on my totals!
 '
18 hours and 15 minutes of reading, 1 hour and 58 minutes of social media
for a total of 20 hours and 13 minutes

Books read:

Dragon Keeper, by Carole Wilkinson 333 pages (my thoughts)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot 328 pages  (my thoughts)
Across the Nightingale Floor, by Lian Hearn 287 pages (my thoughts; scroll down)
If I Ever Get Our of Here, by Eric Gansworth  359 pages
Snow Fire Sword, by Sophie Masson 354 pages
Star of Stone, by P.D. Baccalario 287 pages
Blood Ties (Spirt Animals book 3) 143 pages (not finished)

Total pages read:  2091  which is a rather low page count for me in that many hours, but Henrietta took me a lot longer than reading that many fiction pages would have.

number of books that will now leave the house:  5  (yay!) 

Thank you so much, Mother Reader, for organizing it again this year!

This Week's Middle Grade Sci Fi/Fantasy Round-up! (6/8/14)

Welcome to this week's round-up of middle grade speculative fiction found in my blog reading this week!  Sadly, last night I accidentally marked 181 posts as read in Bloglovin....so if you don't see your post here, that may be why, and please send me the link.

The Reviews:

11 Birthdays, by Wendy Mass, at Becky's Book Reviews

Battle of the Beasts, by Chris Columbus and Ned Vizzini, at  Kid Lit Reviews

The Castle Behind Thorns, by Merrie Haskell, at Shae Has Left the Room  and Rachel Neulmeier

Deadly Delicious, by K.L. Kincy, at Candace's Book Blog

Doll Bones, by Holly Black, at Bewitched Bookworms   and Log Cabin Library

Dragon Keeper, by Carole Wilkinson, at Charlotte's Library

Dragon on Trial, by Tui T. Sutherland and Kari Sutherland, at Hidden In Pages

The Dragon's Egg, by H.B. Bolton, at The Haunting of Orchid Forsythia  and Dear, Restless Reader

The Dyerville Tales, by M.P. Kozlowsky, at The Write Path 

Egg and Spoon, by Gregory Maguire, at Educating Alice

The Feral Child, by Che Golden, at In Bed With Books

The Gargoyle in My Yard, by Philippa Dowding, at thebookshelfgargoyle (also with a review of Heart of Rock, by Becca Price)

The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing, by Sheila Turnage, at Good Books and Good Wine (audiobook review)

The Glass Sentence, by S.E. Grove, at The Book Swarm

Harding's Luck, by E. Nesbit, at Becky's Book Reviews

The Islands of Chaldea, by Diana Wynne Jones, at Manga Mania Cafe 

The Luck Uglies, by Paul Durham, at Geo Librarian  and Books Are Life

The Mark of the Dragonfly, by Jaleigh Johnson, at Black Gate

Operation Bunny, by Sally Gardner, at Sharon the Librarian

Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy, by Karen Foxlee, at Kid Lit Geek

One Wish, by Michelle Harrison, at The Book Smugglers and Wondrous Reads

Ordinary Magic, by Caitlin Rubino-Bradway, at FangirlNation

The Quirks in Cirucs Quirkus, by Eriin Soderberg and Kelly Light, at Nayu's Reading Corner

The Real Boy, by Anne Ursu, at Semicolon

The Rithmatist, by Brandon Sanderson, at Kid Lit Geek

The Riverman, by Aaron Starmer, at Book Nut and Librarian of Snark

Saving Lucas Biggs, by Marisa de los Santos and David Teague, at Waking Brain Cells

The Scavengers, by Michael Perry, at Views From the Tesseract

The Search for Wond-La, by Tony DiTerlizzi, at Fantasy Literature

Seven Stories Up, by Laurel Snyder, at Time Travel Times Two, Two Heads Together, and The Children's Book Review

The Shadows, by Jacqueline West, at Good Books and Good Wine

A Snicker of Magic, by Natalie Lloyd, at Books in the Spotlight

Time and Mr. Bass, by Eleanor Cameron, at Tor

Trickster's Totem, by H.B. Bolton, at The Haunting of Orchid Forsythia

A Wishbone Come True (Puppy Powers) by Kristin Earhart at Ms. Yingling Reads

Zombie Baseball Beatdown, by Paolo Bacigalup, at Friends Share Books

Authors and Interviews

Jane Yolen on "rejection, reading out loud, and the keys to writing great books for kids" at The Huffington Post

Michelle Harrison (One Wish) at the Book Smugglers  and at Wondrous Reads

Lisa Fiedler (Mouseheart) at Kid Lit Frenzy

Other Good Stuff

FangirlNation is live!  "We embrace all levels or fandom, nerdery, geekdom and culture, knowing that in the end we are all passionate about something. We banish the concept of “fake geek girl” knowing every woman deserves the chance to love what she loves without being questioned for her dedication."

Pirates (including space pirates) at Views From the Tesseract  and Orphans at Reads for Keeps  (I am now trying to think of Speculative Fiction Orphaned Pirates)

Betsy at Fuse #8 comes up with a list of underrated middle grade books, many of which are fantasy

The Lost Kings of Faeryland, at Seven Miles of Steel Thistles

And finally, news I just had to share (which might not be news to you, but I just found out about it):  coming Sept. 16 is Lockwood and Co. book 2!

6/7/14

The Immortal LIfe of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot (48 hour reading challenge)

I am so glad that the 48 Hour Reading Challenge bumped The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, to the top of my reading pile.  It is my favorite sort of non-fiction--combining tons of interesting science with people one can care about, and leaving the reader changed by the experience of reading.

The book weaves together four stories.

One is the story of a woman named Henrietta, who loved to paint her toenails red and go out dancing, who loved her children dearly, who was poor, and black, and died of cancer in 1951.

One is the story of what happened to a sample of cells taken from Henrietta's cancerous tumor, and how this HeLa line of cells, with its extraordinary robustness, was used, and is still used, to make many marvellous advances in medicine and the study of cell biology.  The first great contribution Henrietta's cells made were in the development of the polio vaccine, but the list goes on and on and on.

The third is the story of the dark side of medical practice in the mid twentieth century, and how the black, the poor, the incarcerated, and the marginalized suffered at the hands of medical research.

And the fourth is the story of Henrietta's children, especially her daughter Deborah.   It was years before they learned that part of their mother was immortal--that her living cells had been bought and sold for the cause of medical research, while they struggled with poverty and inadequate health insurance.   To learn that part of their mother, who Deborah never knew, was still alive, brought heartache, confusion, and anger.

Into their lives comes Rebecca Skloot, a white woman determined to make the story of HeLa the story of people.  It is a difficult journey for Deborah and for Rebecca.   This book, weaving the four stories together in a utterly readable, mesmerizing, shattering, and poignant way, is the result.

Read it (if you haven't already).

And then read this op ed piece in the New York Times from 2013 that continues the story.  (or you could read the op ed piece now).



6/6/14

Dragon Keeper, by Carole Wilkinson

Question:  Can one really recommend a book about a Chinese dragon in which the dragon has wings?  Or does that throw the whole story so off kilter that all that is good gets overshadowed?

This is the question I was forced to ask while reading Dragon Keeper (originally Dragonkeeper), by Carole Wilkinson (Hyperion, 2003; winner of Australia's Aurealis Award for best YA novel, but it's really middle grade).  It's the story of a girl in the time of China's Han Dynasty who is the slave of the Imperial Dragon Keeper.   He is a nasty piece of work, and the slave girl and dragons are cruelly neglected, to the point where all but one of the dragons have died.   Now the Emperor wants to be rid of the last of them....but the slave girl, who does not at this point even know her name, saves the dragon from the hunter charged with killing it, and the dragon (though wounded in the wing) flies off with her (and her pet rat).

The dragon tells her her name, Ping, and though Ping had thought that maybe she'd simply return home, this is not in the cards.  For one thing, the dragon hunter is after them, and has spread the story that she is a witch.  For another, the dragon doesn't want her too, and is rather insistent that they do things his way.  So Ping, her rat, and the dragon head off toward the mythical ocean (on foot, because of the wounded dragon wing).   And Ping finds that the dragon is taking a rather bossy tone with her, assuming she'll be there to look after the mysterious Dragon Stone that is his chief treasure, and it's a bit hard for her to trust him entirely.  But they journey together, outwitting the bad dragon hunter who's still after them, and meeting sundry other folk (including the new young emperor), and the dragon teaches her to develop the power of her qi (which is formidable, and magically efficacious) and shares Taoist bon mots with her.  And at last, after doubts and dangers, the secret of the Dragon Stone is revealed.

In short, it's a rather engaging "girl with special gifts on journey with dragon" story.  The Chinese setting adds interest (although in that sort of "here is an exotic setting adding interest to this fantasy story" way-- such that quotation marks are called for around "Chinese").  Ping is an appealing heroine (once she gets a name) whose dilemmas and decisions and dangerous circumstances make for good reading.  It gets a few bonus points for making Ping the first ever female Dragonkeeper, and one can cheer her on as she develops self-confidence and self-respect, and one can cheer as well for the brave rat friend.  However, the main dragon character is not my favorite dragon ever-why isn't he more open with Ping?  He's basically using her.  Why does he speak fluently aloud, but in broken English when using telepathy? Why does he suddenly not trust her toward the end? Why do his magical powers never come in all that useful? Why is he keeping a comb under one of his scales (this distracted me)?

And most pressingly of all-   wings on a Chinese dragon?????

So I'm not sure I'll bother to look for the sequels, and I'm not going to bother to offer this one to my own inveterate fantasy reading child.  Though I didn't mind reading it at all-- that the pages turned nicely and I enjoyed it (except when I was being critical)--I think there are better books.

Here's the Kirkus review, if you want another opinion that is essentially the same as mine.

48 Reading Challenge tracking post

Here is the 48 Hour Book Challenge.

Here are my books, an assortment of mostly sci fi/fantasy books, all of a diverse nature:



Here's how I did last year:

Total of pages read/listened to:  3086  

Total time read:  23 hours and 32 minutes

And off  I go at 4:40 pm to do even better.............

Day 1

5:50:  have read Dragon Keeper, by Carole Wilkinson (333 pages). Here's my review.
6:08:  have visited other blogs and commented
8:23:  read from 6:18 to 7:50.  Blogged from 7:50 till now.    Ten minute break, then read till 10:05

Totals for day 1:  5 hours and 12 minutes of reading    48 minutes of social media


Day Two

After 25 minutes of reading, finished my second book--The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot.   Am feeling rather stunned by it.  (328 pages).  Also got in 5 minutes of social media time and 25 minutes blog post writing time.

7:08 pm   Not a good day for reading-I fell aleep, and woke to find my help was need on Project Fix Leaking Roof.

But I have finished a third book--Across the Nightingale Floor, by Lian Hearn.  I'm not going to bother reviewing it, cause of not liking it much.   I think if girls are described as strong when we first meet them, they shouldn't be progressivly described (with no sickness or anything) as more and more delicate.   I think if we are told in no uncertain terms that the main character boy won't make a good assassin because he was raised to abhor killing, some time should be taken to explain how he gets to be the sort of person who casually thinks "Oh I want to kill that person."  I think a few lessons isn't enough to make a novice a compitent sword fighter.  That sort of thing.

Plus the insta love was REALLY over the top.

Kirkus described it as "a rousingly muscular adventure," and I am not sure if we read the same book.  Nor am I sure what a "muscular" adventure is.

stats update:  1 hour of audiobook listening (Throne of the Crescent Moon).   2 and half more hours of reading.  10 more minutes of social media.  1 nap.  1 hour scraping paint off really long piece decorative molding taken from area of suspected roof leak.

day two totals:  5:55 hours of reading.  1 hour of social media

Day three: 7 hours and 35 min of reading, 10 min social media

6/5/14

My pile of wonderfully diverse books for the 48 Hour Book Challenge (that starts tomorrow!)

 The 48 Hour Book Challenge starts tomorrow!  The theme this year is Diverse Books!

And I now return to the computer after grazing through my tbr shelves, and neatly empiling the results.  

I guess I had a few diverse books on hand. 

Some I've read already, but never reviewed, and because I'd like to have them in my list of diverse science fiction and fantasy reviews, I'm hoping to read them again.  Silver Phoenix, I am looking at you in particular--I read you when you first came out, and the blogging world seemed saturated with reviews....and darn it, I will review you this weekend if it is the last thing I do! (nervous realization that sequel to Silver Phoenix, which also needs to be read again and reviewed, is not on the pile, and I am now wondering how many books have escaped the shelf areas and are breeding in the corners).

As well as the Read but Not Reviewed books, many of these books on the pile are ones I bought brand new with my very own money years and years ago and NEVER READ.  I hate that.   I will read them this weekend.

And some are books that came my way through various gentle paths of publishers, library book sales, giveaways....I want to read them all. 

So there is my pile.  Wish me luck!

(Just in case anyone is wondering-- the artwork to the left of the pile is an eighth grade art project--it has a joystick head, and is holding a gaming thingy.  The copper thing on the right is a French match holder from the 1940s.  The wood stove is Danish.   The agricultural implement decoration is from Rhode Island. The small child chair is American; we still fit in it even though we are a bit larger than we were when we bought it.  The paint is not as orange as it looks.)

Dragon Girl: the Secret Valley, by Jeff Weigel -- great graphic novel fantasy fun!

If you have on hand a nine or ten year old girl who loves mythical creatures, RUN to get a hold of Dragon Girl: The Secret Valley, by Jeff Weigel (Andrews McMeel Publishing, June 3, 2014, 192 pages) .   The baby dragons she'll meet here will make her heart absolutely melt.  If you have any other sort of kid around who loves graphic novels (including, in my case, a 13 year old boy), you can also move very briskly indeed to put it into their hands.   And I myself loved it.

Dragon Girl tells how a girl named Alanna finds a dragon hatching ground, becoming the surrogate mother to one of the baby dragons after the mother is killed by a knight, Sir Cedric, who's determined to rid the world of the "scourge" of dragonkind.    Alanna loves the time she spends with her new dragon friends, befriending other hatchlings through dancing and playing, while wearing a dragon disguise she made herself to keep them from becoming too trusting of humans.  This is a wise thing for her to have done (though it doesn't work on her special dragon friend, who loves her in human form too!).   Because when Alanna's older brother spills the beans about the baby dragons to Sir Cedric (because of wanting more of a life than his home village offers), Cedric is filled with fighterly determination to kill them all....and then, when he sees that the eggs are veined with silver, greed comes into play too.

When a grown-up dragon arrives at the hatching ground to take the babies off down a tunnel to the secret valley of the dragons, Alanna's dragon costume is so convincing that she's carried off with the hatchlings.  Cedric and Alanna's brother follow, and find a world full of dragons (and lots of silver, which sets Cedric's greedy heart afire!).  There they meet a young woman named Margolyn, who studies dragons from her steampunkish airship, who helps them foil Cedric's nefarious plans.

nice bonus:  it's Alanna's cleverness that gets Sir Cedric in the end--yay for smart girls!

It is lovely, charming, exciting and moving, and great fun all around!  The illustrations, in black and white, do an excellent job of moving the story along without distracting the graphic-novel challenged of us from the words!  The baby dragons are adorable, as is Alanna in her dragon garb! And as an added bonus, pages from Margolyn's dragon-study notebook, and detailed schematics of her airship, are included.

This one is a winner, and I am sending it off with my fifth grade today to share with  his dragon-loving friends today full of the happy certainty that it will delight them.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.

6/4/14

The Highest Dream, by Phyllis A. Whitney (1956) --more fun with retro teen fiction!

Yay!  My ex-eighth grader has his French exam yesterday, and life is better and I can start getting caught up on my review backlog....

But just for kicks, here's what I read while learning French with my dear boy-- The Highest Dream, by Phyllis A. Whitney (1956), another discard from my local library (actual cover of my copy shown).  And yes, this is the Phyllis A. Whitney of Gothic Mystery Fame, taking a break from damsels in distress to write an edifying book for teens.  I almost did not take it home from the booksale sorting closet, because, frankly, it looks like she's a stewardess who wants to claw someone's eyes out (that fingernail is scary!), and that is not really My Thing.

But I did. 

And now I can safely say that if you want 1950s propaganda for the United Nations, along with a career story, along with a romance, this is the book you need!  Me being sincere (really):  I enjoyed it.   I think I was in the mood for tender optimism and regression to the childish naivete that lurks beneath the cynical surface of my mind.

Our heroine, Lisa, has just graduated from college and all she knows about life is that she doesn't want to go into radio because that's what her father is famous for.   While visiting the UN with her mother, she is struck by the attractive uniform and neat appearance of the young African American woman giving the tour, and is struck as well by the realization that the UN is a Good Thing.  Being attractive and slender herself, and happy to be convinced that the UN is wonderful, she decides to become a tour guide.

This gives her the chance to make Friends from Many Lands (all attractive young women) and also Friends from New York (including an attractive man with relationship issues, and a not-quite-as-attractive-as-the-tour-guides room-mate, uneducated and unrefined, but Warm and Vibrant, who suffers from reverse intellectual snobbishness that Lisa manages to overcome with her frank, accepting disposition).  (Me being sincere--I actually appreciated that Lisa and her room-mate were able to talk about their differences in education and expectations in a frank way--it avoided being a set piece of lesson learning, though it came close.  Really close.)

Fun! is provided by the little girls who live in the apartment across the way, with their playful playfulness etc.  (more sincerity--they were actually kind of fun).

In any event, there's Lisa, becoming ever more sincere in her worship of the UN, and at last she gets the happy ending of a job in UN public relations and the handsome man mentioned above who also Believes.   (As shown in the cover at right, the kicked-up leg shows it is true love; the fact that is at only a 45 degree angle shows that the course of true love was not as fast as it might have been).

And the girls across the way go trick or treating for UNICEF.

I was genuinely moved by the UN propaganda.  In the years of my own adulthood, I'm not sure what the UN has managed to achieve viz world peace, and so it was rather poignant to read a peon to  the good it did back in the 1950s (UNICEF!  the fight against disease! the optimism of it all viz world peace!).  That being said,  I appreciated that amid all the propaganda there were cynical characters who didn't think the dreams of world peace were going to happen, and interesting, somewhat cynical speculation about what role the US should have in world affairs (one character speaks disparagingly of the US approach of jumping in and ramming democracy down people's throats), and there's a straight-out acknowledgement that the "good" of the UN can't explain or justify or balance the Korean War to those who have lost their loved ones to it.

In any event, I also very much appreciated that several of the Friends from Many Lands were not at all shy about expressing their critical opinions about American cultural values (such as hurry hurry hurry to get more, more more!).  AND I appreciated that Lisa and her young man had a Frank Conversation about how she would want a life of her own, with meaningful work to do, and wouldn't be just his wife.

So I can imagine re-reading it someday...But that being said, I was in a Troubled state of mind because of all the French, so I'm not convinced if it was all a fever dream or not.

And really annoyingly, I don't think that five days of intense French review has helped my own French at all (nor do I have any conviction that my son did well on the exam....).   But at least I know more about the UN in the 1950s, and that's something.
 

6/2/14

Pandemic, by Yvonne Ventresca

Pandemic, by Yvonne Ventresca (Sky Pony Press, May 2014) is a solid "first disastrous viral outbreak" for the young teen, and in as much as I enjoy a good (fictional) virus, I picked it up with enthusiasm.

Only a few people know why Lil became a withdrawn pessimist, broke up with her boy friend, took up smoking, and  lost control of her grades in school.  The reader, however, quickly learns that she was sexually assaulted by a teacher (though the details aren't revealed till further along in the book), and though she was able to get away from  him before he could actually rape her, her confidence in humanity, and in herself, is shattered.

One of her coping strategies is to prepare for emergencies, stockpiling food and supplies...just in case.  But nothing can prepare Lil for what's about to happen.   Alone in the house while her parents are both at separate conferences, Lil hears the first news stories about a new strain of flu....and faster and faster the reports of illness and death start coming in.  Lil's New Jersey town is near the epicenter of the new pandemic, and its effects on normal life are devastating.  The death toll rises, looters are on the prowl, and Lil must cope with disaster on an epic scale, while still struggling with her personal demons.

Fortunately, though she misses her parents terribly, she is not alone--a smoking buddy named Jay becomes her ally (and more) as the two of them try to keep going, and to keep the little kids who depend on them alive.

This one, I think, is a good First Pandemic for the younger teen reader.  It's straightforward in writing style and plot, and though various boxes of disaster are neatly checked off, it's not overwhelmingly horrible and sad.  The cumulative effect of the many bad things that happen is balanced by a sense of certainty that Lil and Jay are going to make it.   So this is one I'd give to a 12 or 13 year old, just moving  into medical disaster territory, and then move on to books that carry a more powerful emotional punch, like The Way We Fall, by Megan Crewe, and then books that hit even harder, like Orleans, by Sherri L. Smith.   

The lack of urgency I felt while reading Pandemic comes in part, I think, from the fact that I just didn't find Lil desperately interesting, and was never desperately worried about her.  The sexual assault sub-plot that comprises the cornerstone of Lil's character as presented to the reader felt somewhat gratuitous and distracting--based on Lily's response to it, I was expecting what happened her to have been worse than it was.  Though I don't want to dismiss how horribly traumatic such an experience as hers would be, I never was quite convinced by Lil's months-long withdrawal, especially as she shows herself capable of rising above disaster and functioning competently during the horror of the pandemic.

Still, the pandemic and its ripple effects of disaster make for gripping reading, and readers can cheer for Lil and Jay's nascent romance with conviction.

(disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher)

6/1/14

This week's round-up of middle grade speculative fiction from around the blogs (6/1/14)

Yay for June and only two more days left of actual school for my eighth grader!  Yay for next weekend--the 48 Hour Book Challenge (my first weekend with no eighth grade homework to fret me!)

 I myself have only one mg spec fic post to offer today (though I have been making good progress with eighth grade French), but here's what I found in my blog reading.  Let me know if I missed your post!

The Reviews

Bite Sized Magic, by Kathryn Littlewood, at Ms. Yingling Reads

Boys of Blur, by N. D. Wilson, at The Write Path

The Castle Behind Thorns, by Merrie Haskell, at alibrarymama and Speculating on Spec Fic

The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls, by Claire Legrand, at Books Take You Places

The Doll in the Garden, by Mary Downing Hahn, at books4yourkids

The Eighth Day, by Dianne Salerni, at Akossiwa Ketoglo  and Charlotte's Library

Enchantress From the Stars, by Sylvia Louise Engdahl,  at The Emerald City Book Review 

The Eye of Zoltar, by Jasper Fforde, at Teen Librarian's Tool Box

Flora and Ulysses, by Kate DiCamillo, at Wondrous Reads

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, by Catherynne M. Valente, at Leaf's Reviews

The Hero and the Crown, by Robin McKinley, at Fyrefly's Book Blog 

The Hero's Guide to Being an Outlaw, by Christopher Healy, at The Haunting of Orchid Forsythia, 
This Kid Reviews Books and Small Review (last two with giveaways)

The Interupted Tale, by Maryrose Wood, at Good Books and Good Wine (audiobook review)

The Island of Chaldea, by Diana Wynne Jones, at Kid Lit Geek

The Jupiter Pirates: Curse of the Iris, by Jason Fry, at Views From the Tesseract

The Luck Uglies, by Paul Durham, at Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books

The Menagerie, by Tui T. Sutherland and Kari Sutherland, at Books4Tomorrow

Mouseheart, by Lisa Fielder, at Book Nut

Mr. Bass's Planetoid, by Eleanor Cameron, at Tor

The Night Gardener, by Jonathan Auxier, at Great Kid Books

The Peculiar, by Stefan Bachmann, at In Libris Veritas

The Real Boy, by Anne Urse, at alibrarymama

The Titanic Locket (Haunted Museum) by Suzanne Weyn, at Mom Read It

The True Meaning of Smekday, by Adam Rex, at The Book Smugglers

Wait Till Helen Comes, by Mary Downing Hahn, at books4yourkids

Zoe and Zak and the Tiger Temple, by Lars Guignard, at Candace's Book Blog

Three Ozma-centric Oz books at Tales of the Marvelous

Authors and Interviews

Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) at PEN America

The Curators of The Cabinet of Curiosites at The Enchanted Inkpot and at Cynsations (with giveaway)

Anna Staniszewski (My Very UnFairy Tale Life and more) at The Book Cellar

Kit Grindstaff (The Flame in the Mist) at The Book Cellar

Other Good Stuff

At the Inky Page--the four worst cliches in middle grade fantasy

10 Dystopias for the younger reader, at Views From the Tesseract

Here's the conference program for the first meeting of the Australian Fairy Tale Society, via Once Upon a Blog

Leila at Bookshelves of Doom is returning to the weird weird world of Nancy Drew with a hilarious look at "The Message In the Hollow Oak."

Great diversity links this week at Diversity in YA

Download your own printable copy of this poster here!

5/30/14

Bonnie, by Lee Wyndham, escapist romance for the young teen of yesteryear

So I was going to write a Thoughtful Post about what makes a really good middle grade book, and how kid appeal isn't the same thing as universal appeal, and memorable characters etc., but then I realized that all I really had to say about it was that a great book is one that, when you reach the end of the last page, you think "that was a great book"  and how far does that sort of discussion post get you?  Not very.

So instead I will share my thoughts about the book I read for pure escapism because it is Friday and my eighth grader has a french exam Monday and it was a hard week at work.

Bonnie, by Lee Wyndham (a Doubleday Signal Book, 1961).  "A shy young girl finds friendship and romance in her first term at a new school."

Bonnie is shy and young.  She has just moved to the city.  While walking the family dog, she meets a Steve, a handsome boy whose hair is the color of ripe wheat (question--did readers back then have a greater familiarity with ripe wheat, so that they could take it in their reading stride without wondering what exact color ripe wheat really is?).  Like good wheat, he is the golden boy of the school, and he wants to be an athletic director when he grows up (this did not make me swoon).

(pause while I look at pictures of ripe wheat and am not impressed by hair-color-attractiveness of it.  I am thinking my boys both have hair the color of ripe wheat, possibly on a cloudy day.  Neither of them has a future as an athletic director though.)



But in any event,  guess what!  The most beautiful, richest girl in the school is a Spoiled Bitch and wants Wheat Boy for her own! She is Mean to Bonnie.

Bonnie is sad.  But she makes friends with a plump jolly girl who is, in all sincerity, a great friend, transcending the trope.

And then, my favorite part of the book!  Bonnie volunteers in the school library!  She shelves.  She plastic-protects.  She helps other students find books!  The school librarian is young and attractive, defying stereotypes!

But Bonnie is sad.  Steve is still being pursued by Bitch Beautiful girl.  He seems to like Bonnie, but it's not his friendship she wants....

Bonnie and her nice friend become singers from a band of boys from their school.  They enjoy it.

And then a new character is introduced, an interesting boy who seems to have character!  Whose hair is not wheaty!   Surely he and Bonnie will learn together that sweetest of all life lessons--that being tan and having white teeth isn't all there is to life!

Not. I was let down.  Snarl.

This is my second Doubleday Signal books, the first being Nurse in Training, which was the most shallow nursing book I have ever read.  I am not sure I will seek out more of them-- though the list inside Bonnie had many that looked, um, interesting-- Judy North, Drum Majorette, and Nancy Kimball, Nurse's Aide (poor Nancy doesn't even get to train to be a nurse...) and the enticing Fishing Fleet Boy (because not all of them are for girls!  There's also Nat Dunlap: Junior "Medic" [sic], and many more, for the lads.) 

Oh well.  Sometimes books like this are just what one needs, and there it is.   My favorite of this genre, though, far and away, is Fifteen, by Beverly Cleary.  I wish I still had my copy of it!

Bonnie came my way because it was only just now being discarded from my local library, which for many years was a time capsule, frozen forever at around 1970.  I get first crack at discards, because of running the book sale, so it's all worked out very well for me.  But the weeding is almost at an end (the librarian having reached "W" for Wyndham), and now no library in all of Rhode Island seems to have any of the Doubleday Signal books.  Not even "Fishing Fleet Boy" which is the most Rhode Islandish of the lot.  Sigh.

And I wish there were still malt shops.

5/29/14

The Lost, by Sarah Beth Durst, with Armchair BEA giveaway of ARC

It is such a lovely thing, when a book you get for review turns out to be a beautifully satisfying read.  All the pressure to be tactful is off, and you can simply say things like "I really truly enjoyed this book and didn't want it to end."  The Lost, by Sarah Beth Durst (Harlequin, May 27th, 2014) was such a book.  The pleasure of having some of it left to read this morning almost made up for the hideous fact that the cat woke me up at 4:30am.

Lauren was on her way to work one day, driving to a job she didn't like, driving away from the return of her mother's cancer.   But instead of doing what she was supposed to, she just kept going, driving down a highway through the desert with no plans or intentions to speak of.  And she found herself in Lost.

Lost is a place where missing things, missing houses and toys and dogs and library books, and even lost oceans end up.  Its residents are people who have lost their way, or been lost, themselves.    If they find what they are missing, they can leave... And in the meantime, they survive, or not, by scrabbling through the detritus of the lost bits of other people's lives.

Lauren doesn't know what she's lost.   And she doesn't know what she's going to find.

Here's what she finds:

--lots of scavenged stuff (those who like people making home-ish places with scavenged stuff will share my pleasure in this aspect of the book)
--two of the most meaningful relationships of her life (such as made my heart ache).
--what she needs to do

Here's what the book did to me:

--erased reality
--left me with images and emotions that I will enjoy revisiting during the coming summer of yard work (my mind plays books back to me as I weed)
--left me with a strong desire to read the sequel (The Missing, coming this November)
--made me want to enthusiastically recommend it

It is a fact that I mostly read books for young readers, and I think part of the reason I enjoyed The Lost so much is that it is a book written for grown-up that keeps all that I love best about kids books--the deeply, lovingly created world, the characters who are worth caring about, and the sense of wonder and possible impossibility you find in the best children's fantasy.    If I had to pigeon-hole The Lost explicitly, I'd call it New Adult fantasy, because the main character, Lauren, is a New Adult, facing the questions that come with that territory (of the "what am I going to make of this life I have in front of me" type).    It's easy to imagine YA readers also enjoying it just fine.

You can read the first two chapters via Sarah Beth Durst's website.   

And if you are an Armchair BEA participant, I'm giving away my (very very gently read; you might not even notice my reading of it) ARC of The Lost.  Just leave a comment by midnight this Saturday (May 31) making sure that I can somehow find you....

And now, having lost track of time, I must rush off.  (I would so love to find all the time I have lost track of during the course of my life.)

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

5/28/14

Armchair BEA-- my favorite books of short stories

The thing about short stories is that they are short, and so for those of us who are fast readers desperately trying to escape reality with full-blown immersion in text they sometimes you get to the end just as the edges of life are starting to blur and you are no longer worrying about the cat's overdue vet appointment etc., and this can be frustrating.

That being said, there are three authors whose short stories I return to time after time for my re-reading pleasure (possibly because some of their short stories verge on novellas....)

The first of these is Ursula Le Guin.   Her stories, of which I feel there are hundreds, encompass  science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction, and historical fiction, and they are twisty, thoughtful, beautiful, disturbing, and above all, memorable.   (Shakes self away from mental wandering through story after story....I have read them so often that I can go into a fugue state where they scroll through my mind).   Happily, her stories have recently been anthologized in two volumes--The Unreal and the Real, from Small Beer Press (2012).   If you are a speculative fiction fan, I'd actually start with Vol. 2, set in various places far beyond earth.  

I don't often say this, but I think reading Ursula Le Guin has made me a better person (or at least someone who tries to be a better person).  She is my favorite author of all, and the most thrilling moment of my blogging career was when she put a link to my review of  her novel, Lavinia up on her webpage.


I have been rereading the same Joan Aiken anthologies since I was nine, and they are pretty much on their last legs.   Some of her stories I wish I hadn't read, because they tip over into horror (at least from the point of view of a kid).   But others have become treasures in the storehouse of my mind.  A good place to start (especially if you are a kid!)  is The Serial Garden--these are all about the same family, and they are funny and magical as all get out (here's my review).   The title story is one of my favorite pieces of short fiction ever.  If  you are a grown-up who likes the darker side of things, you could try to posthumous anthology, The Monkey's Wedding and Other Stories. (both of these are also from Small Beer Press).


Finally, I'd like to share my love for the short stories of Robin McKinley.  My third favorite piece of her writing (after The Blue Sword and Beauty), is the title story of the anthology A Knot in the Grain.  It is the story of a girl whose family relocates to a big old house in the country...and the loneliness of her first summer there, her tentative progress into new friendship, and the old magic she finds in the hidden attic above the attic are beautifully described.  I aso very much enjoy her stories in Water and Fire, although some of these you can feel desperatly straining to become novels of their own....as happens a lot to Robin McKinley, which is why she wasn't able to write short stories for the other elements (Pegasus, for instance, was supposed to be an air short story.....)

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