And now here are my ten-year-old's favorite books with multicultural characters, plus thinking ahead to book shopping tomorrow!

Continuing the Fun with Diverse Books, here's a quick list of great books with multicultural characters to offer your ten-year-old reader of fantasy, as selected by my own dear child.

Astronaut Academy Zero Gravity (2011), and  Astronaut Academy Re-Entry (2013), by Dave Roman, are wonderfully imaginative graphic novels, arguably more sci fi than fantasy.  There's a diverse cast of characters, many of whom are deeply loveable.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin (2009)  I have yet to meet a kid (even my older very picky reader!) who didn't enjoy this lovely story set in a fantasy China.  Both the illustrations and the writing are lovely! 

Jinx (2013) and Jinx's Magic (2014), by Sage Blackwood, is one of those blink-and-you'll-miss-it examples of diversity--the title character has brown skin, and it is mentioned in passing.   (I think we need lots of books in which people just happen to be all sorts of people, that can't be Labeled particular things, because of course readers are all sorts of people themselves).  It's one of my son's favorite series.

Likewise, it's mentioned in passing that the hero of  The Menagerie (2013), and Dragon on Trial (2014) by Tui T. Sutherland and Kari Sutherland, is African American.   Any reader who loves magical creatures should check out this series! 

My Neighbor Totoro (the novel), by Tsugiko Kubo (2013)-- I myself love this book tons.  It's very faithful to movie--all the gentle, sweet magic and family love is there in full force.

And finally, my son wants to make sure I include the Spirit Animal series (the first of which is Wild Born by Brandon Mull (2013), staring a group of kids that includes a girl from a fantasy China and one from a fantasy Africa, and they are shown beatufully, though not very large, on the covers (of books 1 and 3, respectively):

And even more finally, I just want to sneak in a mention of Dragonbreath, Book 2: Attack of the Ninja Frogs, by Ursula Vernon, because even though the main character, Suki, is a salamander, she is a really really cool salamander from Japan.

My ten-year-old will be an eleven-year-old next Wednesday...and for tomorrow's challenge of putting our money where our mouths (or fingers, since we're typing) are, I am walking up the hill to the closest bookstore (B. and N.) to buy a multicultural fantasy book or two for him because I am sure there will be lots to choose from ha ha and if that fails I will have to buy something on-line.  I say "ha ha" because every anniversary of my decision to look for multicultural books I go to the bookstore and last year I managed to happily buy The Summer Prince but it is not as though there are scads of mg sff books that we don't already have with kids of color on the covers....

But in any event,  if B. and N. has a copy of Nightingale's Nest, by Nikki Loftin, I will buy a copy of that because I think its publisher, Razorbill, should be rewarded to the gills for this cover, in particular because no particular ethnicity was specified for the character by the text.

Here are the details for tomorrow from the We Need Diverse Books website:

"On May 3^rd, 2pm (EST), the third portion of our campaign will begin. There will be a Diversify Your Shelves initiative to encourage people to put their money where their mouth is and buy diverse books and take photos of them. Diversify Your Shelves is all about actively seeking out diverse literature in bookstores and libraries, and there will be some fantastic giveaways for people who participate in the campaign! More details to come!"

My most favorite sci fi and fantasy books with diversities of various sorts

Mostly when I blog about diverse science and fiction and fantasy for kids, the books are about characters who don't happen to be white, because other diversities (LGBT protagonists, and kids with disabilities that aren't magically cured being somewhat thin on the ground in speculative fiction books for kids and younger teens).   So just for kicks, here are my favorite spec fic books that including those diversities.

The first book I ever read (I think I was 15) in which the hero was in a loving, committed relationship with another man was The Door Into Fire, by Diane Duane, and I pretty much read this fantasy epic to pieces.  Herewiss is a magic user, his loved, Freelorn, is the exiled heir to a kingdom, and there is just tons of great fantasy world build and sexy times of all sorts.  I myself thought Freelorn was kind of wet (I think I just took against the name right from the beginning), and I was rooting for Herewiss' relationship with a really wonderful fire elemental being (who sometimes took male form, sometimes female, for the sexy good times)....because really a self-confident but poignantly vulnerable shape shifting elemental love interest is more interesting. The other two books in the series that were published (Door into Shadow, and The Door Into Sunset, are fine too, but not quite as preconception-of-sexuality shifting as this one was!

And at the same time, I was reading to pieces many of Marion Zimmer Bradely's Darkover books.  Thendara House, in which two women from different patriarchal societies (one is from Earth and one from Darkover) come to love each other, was a particular favorite, and can be read a stand-alone just fine.  I think I liked this one because I've always enjoyed reading about close communities of women--there's often a comfortable safeness to this sort of book, that in no way precludes emotional and external tensions and adventures, and I also love to read about struggles to navigate social norms in alien cultures.

My favorite spec fic protagonist with a disability (a damaged leg that causes him considerable pain) is Alan, from Sarah Reese Breennan's Demon's Lexicon series because I love him and he is wonderful and he is kind and smart and loves books and I love him.  And the books in which he appears are pretty darn good too.

My second favorite spec fic protagonist with a disability is Eugenides from Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series, who has only one hand.  He is awesome, and the books are awesome (especially The King of Attolia).   I am putting him after Alan because he is so awesome I can't even imagine crushing on him from afar in real life (perhaps in part because the relationship that he's actually in is so perfectly tight that there's no room for strangers to crush on him much).

For cultural and ethnic diversity reimagined in speculative fiction, Ursula le Guin is my go-to author.  Always Coming Home, is an novella set in the future that's situated within an anthropological framework based on Le Guin's extensive knowledge of Native North America.  It's taken me some years to realize how much I appreciate it, but after reliving it countless times while weeding the garden (a benchmark by which I measure books is how clearly and how often my mind offers them back to me again while weeding), I've realized that I truly love it. 

And the other Le Guin I must include is Four Ways to Forgiveness, four stories set on a planet and its moons where dark skinned people enslaved pale skinned people.  In order for this world to become part of the galactic community, the inequities of this culture must be resolved, and it's a difficult and painful process.   The characters in these stories are some of Le Guin's most memorable, which is saying  a lot.   And I'm also fond of this one for personal reasons--when I first met my husband, it had just come out, and both of us had it on our respective nightstands.

We Need Diverse Books!

The We Need Diverse Books Campaign is off and running!  Today folks are sharing there reasons why, and here is my younger son with his own sign--"We need diverse kid's books because it's easy for me to find kids like me in books but it's not easy for my friends!"

 

I've been trying to blog about books with diversity for the past five years (here's the post in which I get started), hunting out fantasy and sci fi books for kids in which the protagonists are kids who don't default to white. I want my boys to take it for granted that any kid, from any part of the world, can be the hero or heroine of a story. I've kept a list of the multicultural books I've reviewed here, and I've just started a new blog, Diversity in Science Fiction and Fantasy for Kids and Teens, where I'm posting them all in one place, to make them easier to find.  (I'd hoped to have more of reviews up there by today, but I found too many typos to make it go as quickly as I'd hoped!)

The We Need Diverse Books campaing continues tomorrow and the next day.  From the site:

 

"On May 2^nd, the second part of our campaign will roll out with a Twitter chat scheduled for 2pm (EST) using the same hashtag. Please use #WeNeedDiverseBooks at 2pm on May 2nd and share your thoughts on the issues with diversity in literature and why diversity matters to you.

 

On May 3^rd, 2pm (EST), the third portion of our campaign will begin. There will be a Diversify Your Shelves initiative to encourage people to put their money where their mouth is and buy diverse books and take photos of them. Diversify Your Shelves is all about actively seeking out diverse literature in bookstores and libraries, and there will be some fantastic giveaways for people who participate in the campaign! More details to come!"

The Dyerville Tales, by M.P. Kozlowsky

I read The Dyerville Tales (Walden Pond Press, middle grade, April 2014) avidly, with interest and enjoyment (though not true love), and usually when this happens it's easy for me to prattle on about the book's pleasing qualities.  But I find myself somewhat stuck as I try to write about this one, because I'm not entirely sure I can define why I enjoyed reading it, nor am I entirely sure I could successfully pick the young readers who would love it (though I'm sure they exist).

Vince Elgin has lived in an orphanage ever since the terrible fire that destroyed his home.  He knows it killed his mother, but nothing of his father was ever found....leaving Vince with horrible, desperately comforting, faith that his father will someday come back for him.   He tells the story of the fire over and over again to the other orphans, with its ending he has to keep believing--the arrival of the fiery dragon, and his father's disappearance in pursuit of it.  When word arrives at the orphanage that Vince's paternal grandfather has died, Vince knows he must go to Dyerville for the funeral--surely his father will be there.   And so he absconds from the orphanage, with little in the way of a plan, but with lots of hope.

He has something else as well.  The friend of Vince's grandfather who sent the death notice sent something else as well--a book in which he'd recorded all the grandfather's stories.   And as Vince makes his way through the cold winter to Dyerville, meeting friends and foes along the way, he reads these stories to himself and to others.   The fantastical journey described therein can't possibly be true, what with the evil witch, the blinded giant, the enchanted beasts, and the magical book.  But Vince has been practicing his belief in the impossible as hard as ever he can, and so he takes from his grandfather's story an answer, of a magical sort, that will finally give him peace.

The Dyerville Tales is two stories--the mundane world of Vince's journey, and the fantasy journey of his grandfather.  Both are somewhat episodic--Vince's journey in the real world less so--which I was perfectly comfortable with during the reading.  But I think that my reservation about the book comes from a sense that the thematic links aren't quite strong enough to ever make the two strands of stories, and even the stories within those strands, work together to make a coherent whole.  

And I was left with doubt about Vince's grandfather, as opposed to finding him and his life convincing emotionally--he must have been a real person, because there Vince is, but his life as told in the fantastically stories can't have been all there was to him, and we don't quite get to see any of that "real" person in our "real" world.  

I think, having now writing this, that the young reader I'd give this to would have to be one who loved fairy tales, who isn't the sort to come back to a parent after reading and say "but...but...."  A trusting sort of child, who doesn't have to have things make Sense.  Which, at this point in my life, isn't exactly me.

Here's another review, with fewer reservations, at Random Musings of a Bibliophile.

Disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

In the Keep of Time, by Margaret J. Anderson, for (the Wednesday's) Timeslip Tuesday

At first glance, In the Keep of Time, by Margaret J. Anderson (1977) seems like a standard time travel story--four siblings, unwillingly spending the summer with a great aunt in the Scottish boarderlands, explore the ruined castle nearby.  Their aunt is its chatelaine, and has given them the key to the tower...and when they turn it (after it starts glowing, the way magic keys do), they travel back in time to the 15th century.   But soon a twist appears--the youngest child, Olivia, has no memory of her contemporary self.  Instead, she is Mae, grand-daughter of the castle's lord, with a family who loves her, and absolutely no inclination to trust her three siblings. 

And to make things even more exciting, the castle is besieged by an English army, and its own fighting men are away on a cattle raid.  Andrew, with Mae as his guide, is sent to warn them  (exciting adventure in the past bit happens, including a battle between James II of Scotland and the English).  

But for me, things really picked up when the three older kids drag Mae/Olivia back into the present with them.  They had expected her to become Olivia once more, but to their consternation, she remains Mae.  Child of the middle-ages that she now is, she is terrified and wonder struck in turn by the marvels of the present.   And her siblings, seeing no other recourse, desperately work to make Mae into a child of the 20th century who their parents might not realize is someone who misses her "real" mother back in the past....In the process, the siblings come to appreciate each other more (which was something their parents were hoping to accomplish by sending them off together for the summer).

Then the key glows again...and the kids head back to the keep.  Once more they travel through time, but now they find themselves several centuries in the future, and this might be the earliest example in a children's book of a future that imagines the consequences of sea-level rise from global warming caused by over-reliance on technology.   The only inhabitant of the keep in this time period is an old, mysterious woman....who is able (off-stage) to return Olivia to herself (at least, enough so that she isn't Mae anymore....).

This book is the sort to knock the socks off the nine or ten year old who's never read a time travel book, the sort of book they might well remember for life.    It's one that is best read as young as possible, though...I found it a pleasant read, but certainly it was not as emotionally powerful as it would have been to a younger me, whose relationships with siblings and parents were of primary importance. 

I had read Margaret J. Anderson's Searching for Shona, but had not realized she'd written time travel books, two of which appear to be connected to this one.   I'll be looking out for them!

The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison

If The King of Attolia, by Megan Whalen Turner, met the City Watch books of Discworld and Bitterblue, by Kristin Cashore, the resulting book might remind one of The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison (Tor Books, April 1, 2014).  Basically, it's about a decent young man (who reminded me of Sam from Discworld, because both have compassion that transcends social boundaries), thrust into a world of dysfunctional corruption and political intrigue, who is lonely, and trapped by power, who has to learn really really quickly who he can trust and how to get things done....

Plot Summary:

Maia never expected to be Emperor--his father, ruler of the Elflands, had other sons much more pleasing to him then the despised child of a despised goblin wife.   And so, after the death of his mother when he was eight, Maia lived far from the imperial court, abused both physically and mentally by a bitter, drunken guardian.

Then the Emperor's airship explodes--and Maia is the only son left.  Half-goblin though he is, he becomes the Emperor, and all unprepared he's forced into a world of daunting etiquette, court intrigue, power struggles, corruption, and treason.   Still a teenager, innocent in many ways, Maia is at first at sea in the swirling morass of the court, and he struggles to shake the viciously critical voice of his abuser from his head.  But as Maia grows in confidence and power, he must, for the sake of his own sanity, cling to the core of his self--and it is his compassion and basic decency that bring the greatest ripples of change to his empire.

The Fantasy Elements

The fantasy elements are pretty straightforward.  The world is at a nascent industrial revolution stage(airships and mechanical are being build).  There's some "magic," most obviously in the ability that some individuals have to communicate with the dead. 

But of course the main fantasy element is that the people of the world are elves and goblins, and both have ears that convey body language (this disconcerted me right to the end).  The elves and the goblins differ from each other in appearance (the goblins have dark skin and red eyes, and are more robust, the elves white skin and blue/green eyes) and in culture, but they intermarry, and there's a lot of that on the boarder between the two realms.    Maia's mother was despised by the emperor not because she was the dark-skinned daughter of the Barizhan goblin king, but because he had dearly loved his previous wife, who died in childbirth.  That being said, Maia's abusive guardian did not spare him racial taunts.   

Issues of race and identity

I'm always a tad  leery of books where the characters are "elf" or "goblins," words so loaded with preconceptions.   And I make a habit of asking "Is it really necessary for these characters to be "elves/goblins?"  In this case, it's not actually crucial; this could have been an alternate Europe/Africa world, with human people who had different skin tones. But I appreciated how the choice to make the characters "fantasy others" allowed Addison to come at issues of race and identity from a different direction.  Fantasy such as this allows the familiar to be remigned afresh and strange, which, done well, is thought-provoking. 

In any event, Maia is a dark-skinned person in a court where everyone else in power is light skinned, and he'd keenly aware of it.   And it's not just mentioned once--his self-consciousness about his physical appearance, his observations of others, a large part of his sense of self,  are shaped by this fact and it keeps coming up in his mind.   Here's an example, when Maia is at a reception hosted by the Barizhan ambassador:

"It was the first time in his life Maia had been surrounded by people who were like him instead of only snow-white elves with their pale eyes, and he missed several names in the effort not to faint or hyperventilate or burst into tears." (page 195)

So in a nutshell, the issue of race pervades the story, and it's pretty thought-provoking. 

(Here's what I'd like to see someday--beautiful dark-skinned elves and short, stocky white goblins.  Because if your using fantasy to confront racism, why not go all the way.  Except then the main character would be white, so it wouldn't be confronting racism in the same way.  And without the negative-ness of "goblin" a lot of who Maia is in relation to the elves would be lost....)

This is also the only fantasy book I can think of in which a young male character is traumatized by an occasion when he was almost very horribly raped.   It is also a book in which there are characters who are gay, and characters who might well be gay (or not).  Sometimes in some cases this leads to complications.  Heterosexuality is the norm, but it's nice to see some diversity.  The role of women in a patriarchal society is also addressed, and very nicely too.  Maia, himself oppressed and denied an education, is sympathetic to the women he meets who want more than marriage and children.

A specific criticism (or, how my personal reading experience could have been better)

It is a very complicated world that Katherine Addison has created here, not so much in terms of the big picture, but because there is a very large cast of characters, many of whom are related to each/plotting against each other/with complicated backstories.   And her world comes with complicated naming conventions--perfectly believable, but rather hard to pick up quickly.   Fast readers like me, who are bad at names in general, will be confused.   I wish the explanatory note and the index had been put at the beginning instead of at the end, and I wish Addison had not relied on names as identifiers, but put in helpful phrases like "his father's aunt" or "the woman he would marry." 

The book would have been a more pleasantly immersive experience if I hadn't been reading slowly because of not being at all sure who people were.

(In fairness, the confusion occasioned by naming conventions worked beautifully to make me empathize with Maia, who was experiencing his own confusions right along with me, so as a rhetorical device I can't really fault it.)

And finally, my Final Thought:

I liked it a lot.  I don't have the urge to turn around right this sec and re-read it, but I can imagine I will want to in the future.   I imagine I might enjoy it more a second time, knowing who everyone is.

This week's round-up of middle grade science fiction and fantasy from around the blogs (4/27/14)

Welcome to the last middle grade sci fi/fantasy round-up of April, a month in which I reviewed fewer mg sff books than I have for years, and I am really glad I have nothing to do other than go to work (hopefully without calls from the medical examiner's office this month; even deer bones can suck up time) and clean/repair the house/children (can we fix the leak ourselves, or will it require costly repairs?  Will my ten year old let me cut his hair?) and do an unending amount of yard work and run the library booksale in the next month. and probably other things, like maybe BEA, and so I am sure I will have hours and hours of time in which to read and review.

In any event, I didn't have time to search as hard as I might have for posts this week, so please let me know if missed your post this week!

The Reviews:

Boys of Blur, by N.D. Wilson, at Views From the Tesseract

Constable and Toop, by Gareth P. Jones, at Sonderbooks

The Curse of the Thrax (Book 1 of the Bloodsword Trilogy) by Mark Murphy, at thebookshelfgargoyle

Dragon on Trial (The Menagerie, Book 2), by  Tui T. Sutherland and Kari Sutherland, at Ms. Yingling Reads

The False Prince, by Jennifer Nielsen, at Guys Lit Wire

Flora and Ulysses, by Kate DiCamillo, at Rcubed's Reads and Reviews

The Foundry's Edge (The Books of Ore, Book 1), by Cam Baity and Benny Zelkowicz, at Librarian of Snark

The Ghosts of Trupelo Landing, by Sheila Turnage, at Reads for Keeps

The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, by Catherynne M. Valente, at Speculating on Spec Fic

The Gliter Trap, by Barbara Brauner and James Iver Mattson, at Wandering Librarians

Gregor the Overlander, by Suzanne Collins, at SW Lothian

Heir Apparent, by Vivian Vande Velde, at Leaf's Reviews

Horizon, by Jenn Reese, at On Starships and Dragonwings

The House of Arden, by E. Nesbit, at Becky's Book Reviews

How to Catch a Bogle, by Catherine Jinks, at School Library Journal (audiobook review)

Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel by K. A. Holt, at Original Content

The Nightshade Chronicles Books 2 and 3 (The White Assassin and Lords of Trillium), by Hilary Wagner, at Log Cabin Library

The Ninja Librarians: The Accidental Keyhand, by Jen Swann Downey, at The Book Monsters, Charlotte's Library, and Word Spelunking (with interview)

Rose and the Lost Princess, by Holly Webb, at The Emerald City Book Review (with giveaway)

Rump, by Liesl Shurtliff, at Becky's Book Reviews

The Search for WondLa, by Tony DiTerlizzi, at The Overstuffed Bookcase

The Song of the Quarkbeast, by Jasper Fforde, at Geranium Cat's Bookshelf

Sky Raiders, by Brandon Mull, at Fantasy Literature and The Write Path

Switched at Birthday, by Natalie Standiford, at Not Acting My Age

Unforseen, by Ridley Pearson, at Manga Maniac Café

Wednesdays in the Tower, by Jessica Day George, at Tales of the Marvelous

The Wells Bequest, by Polly Shulman, at Time Travel Times Two

A World Without Princes, by Soman Chainani, at AP Book Club

Two at Supernatural Snark--Bite Size Magic, by Kathryn Littlewood, and The Finisher, by David Baldacci

Two by Diana Wynne Jones at The Book Smugglers-- Homeward Bounders, and Black Maria

Authors and Interviews

Maureen Doyle McQuerry (Beyond the Door) on Why Kids (and Parents!) Need Myths, at Working Mother

Diane K. Salerni (The Eighth Day) -- Heroes and Villains #3: The Evolution of an Antagonist, at Project Mayhem, and also interviewed at Project Mayhem

Jonathan Auxier (The Night Gardener) is on tour, discussing what happens "After the Book Deal." You can find all the stops at his site.

Soman Chainani (A World Without Princes) at A Backward Story


Other Good Stuff

At Tor, you can browse a selection of the best Clone Trooper action figure pictures ever, from artist ZahirBatin

A Tuesday Ten of environmental spec fic for kids at Views from the Tesseract

Shannon Hale talks about Altered Perceptions, an anthology in which she has a story written to support Robison Wells, beset by the financial difficulties that have come with his struggle against mental illness.

Some folks have organized a call for action regarding the lack of diversity, and the lack of attention paid to diversity, in children's book publishing.  The first three days of May has been set as a time for readers and reviews to raise their voices to make a difference.  More detailed information can be found here at weneeddiversebooks

In which Kate Milford talks about self-publishing, Bluecrowne, and working with young artists

For my 2,500th post (!)  I have the pleasure welcoming Kate Milford, sharing her adventures in self-publishing.   Her latest venture, Bluecrowne (Arcana Project #2) takes place in and around the world her traditionally-published novels The Boneshaker and The Broken Lands (which I loved; here's my review), and the forthcoming Greenglass House (Clarion, August 26, 2014, and I can't wait!) and The Left-Handed Fate (Holt, 2015--this is the first I've heard of this one!  Exciting!).  

Kate is self-publishing Bluecrowne with the help of a Kickstarter campaign, which runs through tomorrow, April 25th.  Here's the description over at Kickstarter:  "Bluecrowne is a work of moderately frightening historical fantasy rooted in folklore. In it you'll meet villainous itinerant peddlers, young fireworks prodigies, privateers, and even the odd immortal or two. You'll learn why ship's biscuit is awesome, especially if it's stale (spoiler alert: WEEVILS). You'll learn the properties of cald-fire and lyke-fire, and the Chinese term for red massicot, just in case you ever need to know."

It sounds great.  And now, here's Kate, explaining more about it, with illustrations by some of the young artists involved in the project.

What I Learned While Self-Publishing (and it isn’t what you think)

            There are a lot of reasons to self-publish, even if you already work with publishers you love. But whatever the reason or reasons, you learn things in the process. Here are some of the things I learned with the first volume of the Arcana Project, and the reason I decided to do it again.   

            I wrote The Kairos Mechanism in February and March of 2012 and published it in September after a successful Kickstarter campaign. Part of the project was the reader-illustrated edition, which was something I’d added to the whole thing as sort of an afterthought. It turned out to be my favorite part of the project. The idea was that I’d find young artists to illustrate the book, one per chapter, and with their work we’d create a special ebook and that edition would be free or pay whatever, and that way the artists could share their work with their friends and family at no cost. Any money made from folks who did buy the edition would go toward the next volume of the project.

            I spent half of 2012 assembling the group of artists. Some I had known through social media, some were referrals from teachers and librarians, from friends and friends of friends. The youngest artist was eleven; the oldest had just turned twenty. The rest were everywhere in between. I sent each a copy of The Kairos Mechanism and asked them to send their top three choices for chapters they’d like to illustrate, then I went through and made sure I had each chapter and each scene covered that I felt really needed to be represented.

           

     We corresponded on and off throughout the summer. Some of that correspondence was for purposes of clarification about practical details. Sometimes I got communications that weren’t about input, just about excitement. I decided to use this style, and I did research about it. I picked this moment to illustrate because I wanted this character to have something beautiful. And, of course, I got a few emails asking for feedback about what they’d done. I learned a lot about my own shortcomings, artistic and otherwise, as I tried to be cautiously helpful.

            My feeling is that it’s my responsibility to be as clear as possible about whatever needs to be clear in the text for purposes of the story, but details beyond that are up to the reader. I don’t want them feeling like they have to fill in the blanks just to make the story make sense, obviously; but I want them to feel empowered to make interpretations and create mental pictures for themselves—to own the story as they read it and afterward. The last thing I wanted to do was have any of the artists involved in the illustrated edition not follow his or her instincts because I had weighed in and changed their minds or made them question their own interpretations.

            But in at least one instance I caused just exactly that situation to occur. The artist had emailed me a draft and asked my opinion, and although I loved it I’d posed some food-for-thought questions anyway, and taking those questions for instructions, she re-did her work. Both versions were wonderful, but it hadn’t been my intention to make her second-guess her first instincts. I learned my lesson and tried to do better after that. I wanted the art to reflect the text accurately, but beyond that, I wanted the artists to make their own choices.

 

           Another thing I learned is that everything takes longer than you anticipate. A dozen-plus kids and young adults having to work around summer travel, summer reading and summer projects of their own? (This is not a complaint.) But the point when art started arriving was up there with the highlights of 2012, which had already turned out to be a good year. Some sent their pieces by mail, others emailed them. They were all so different from each other—of course, it couldn’t be otherwise, with so many different people at work, but it was still fascinating. There are several variations on Natalie, the main character, and several different versions of the villain, Trigemine; but each interpretation reveals something unique and special about those characters.

            The original plan was to have one illustration per chapter, but some of the artists lobbied to be able to do more than one (and some just went ahead and sent more than one), and since a couple folks had to withdraw due to scheduling issues, that worked out well. Still, as the project neared its end, I had to find one more kid. That last artist to join was a referral from my cousin, who works with inner-city Baltimore youths. Hassan, who was twelve at the time, is a gifted artist, but my cousin had hinted that he might not be a big reader. When I asked him how he’d like to work, what we settled on was that I’d mark suggested scenes in the book, then he could pick which ones he wanted to do and I’d clarify as needed. My first set of notes involved highlighted sections in the paperback and post-it notes with what amounted to TL;DR summaries. Old-timey bar; a man sits with his head on the bar. Statues: an African man with a candle, and old woman with a harp, a young woman with long hair and a ring on one hand. Hassan’s was among the art that just showed up, and I wound up asking him a couple of times to redo one of the scenes he’d settled on, for the sake of accuracy. We wound up doing research more or less together in order to get Hassan the information he needed to be able to complete a piece that matched the text, and the result is one of my favorite images, the statue in Chapter Ten, which he signed along the ragged edge where he’d torn the page from his sketch book.

            By the time I finished the first completed draft of Bluecrowne, I had enough in the bank from sales of The Kairos Mechanism and from royalties from an anthology to know that even if the Bluecrowne Kickstarter failed, I could afford to pay the cover artist, designer, and editor. But what I knew I wouldn’t be able to afford was the illustrated edition, and it was that more than anything that made me decide to attempt crowdfunding for the second time. Now that the campaign has reached its goal, I know I have another illustrated edition to look forward to, and I absolutely cannot wait.

 Thank you Kate!  Though the Kickstarter has been fully funded(congratulations!),  contributions are still welcome, and will allow Kate to keep working on more awesomness.

AFTER THE BOOK DEAL, Day Three: "I Hate Networking" - Guest Post by Jonathan Auxier, author of the forthcoming The Night Gardener

Today I'm pleased to welcome Jonathan Auxier for Day Three of his After the Book Deal blog tour! Jonathan is the author of Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes, and The Night Gardener, which I'll be reviewing closer to its May 20th release date. 

AFTER THE BOOK DEAL - Guest Post by Jonathan Auxier

The Internet is full of great advice about how to sell a book, but what about after the sale? When my first book came out, I found it was surprisingly hard to find answers to some basic questions. Like most authors, I learned most of the answers through trial and error. And so in anticipation of the launch of my new novel, The Night Gardener, I’ve decided to write down everything I learned so I don’t make the same mistakes twice!

AFTER THE BOOK DEAL is a month-long blog series detailing the twenty things I wish someone had told me before entering the exciting world of children’s publishing. Each weekday from now until MAY 20, I will be posting an article on a different blog. Follow along and please spread the word!

 

 

DAY THREE - I Hate Networking

Yesterday we discussed how to craft your online identity, and today I want to look a little more closely at how to navigate the world of social networking. There is no shortage of advice about online marketing, so I won’t waste time trying to convince you that it’s important. Instead I’ll just list a few things I have observed that might be helpful.

 

TWITTER – The first thing you should do is read author Nathan Bransford’s excellent post on how to use Twitter. Twitter is an invaluable tool for connecting with strangers. It was through Twitter that I discovered my favorite bloggers. It was through Twitter that I met authors, booksellers, teachers, and librarians who shared similar interests—in short, it helped me find my tribe. Case in point: when I was registering for my first ALA conference, someone shouted my name from across the room. It was an author I knew from Twitter who introduced me to a whole group of other authors, who ended up becoming friends (more on that in Week Two).

 

FACEBOOK – Now that I’m a bit more established, I have found that Facebook has become a more valuable tool than Twitter—it’s a way to maintain and deepen the connections that I made through Twitter. Think of Facebook as “phase two” of your social networking plan. The easiest way to do this is by accepting friends on your private Facebook account. I would recommend that you NOT make a separate “author page.” Managing two different pages can be a hassle—plus with new changes to Facebook, author pages no longer reach a wide audience (unless you pay an advertising fee!). If you worry that your current Facebook profile might turn off potential readers, then this is a good time to examine the sorts of things you’re posting. While it’s fun to vent about politics or a neighbor you hate, you should probably save such things for real-life interactions. Keep Facebook friendly, but professional.

 

GOODREADS – Goodreads is a unique tool insofar as it is designed specifically for the publishing world. Before Peter Nimble came out, I reached out to a group of family and friends who had read my book and asked them to review it on Goodreads—many of them obliged, which resulted in my book having a strong star rating right out of the gates. That was nice, but along with those strong reviews, I got a few zero-star reviews from total strangers who had not read the book. Why did they decide to give me zero stars? I don’t know. All I know is that it drove me crazy. I learned when talking to other authors that my experience was pretty much universal. Every new writer spends a dark week where they obsess over star ratings ... ratings over which they have no control. So here’s my advice on Goodreads. Don’t do it. Stay away. It will make you crazy. Beyond rallying a few troops to give you reviews, it’s not worth your time. Goodreads is designed for readers, not writers.

 

YOUR AUTHOR WEBSITE – A few years ago, author blogs were a fairly important part of online marketing. Things have changed in recent years, and author blogs are no longer essential. (Some of this might be the death of the Google’s Reader, which results in fewer blogs being read overall). When I was preparing to launch my first book, I spent a LOT of energy in crafting a thoughtful, well designed website. I was posting four times a week, which may not seem like much, but I am a SLOW writer, which meant I was spending 25+ hours per week maintaining a website. While I won some early fans and am proud of the work, the time commitment was exhausting and unsustainable.

 

These days, author websites seem to serve two basic functions. First, they provide a place for readers to visit and learn more about you (and about your other books!). Second, they provide a way for schools/libraries/bookstores to screen authors before booking them for events. (I know this because when people contact me for an event, they always mention that my website sealed the deal for them.) So, by all means, make an author website that is professional and reflects your platform—but don’t feel pressure to update it more than once a week. That time is better spent elsewhere—mainly in starting your next manuscript (more on that in Week Three).

 

That’s it for day three of AFTER THE BOOK DEAL! I should mention that you should follow me on Twitter and be my friend on Facebook, and visit my awesome website. Tomorrow I’ll be at The Lost Entwife discussing the pros and cons of book trailers!

 

***

JONATHAN AUXIER writes strange stories for strange children. His new novel, The Night Gardener, hits bookstores this May. You can visit him online at www.TheScop.com where he blogs about children's books old and new. 

The Ninja Librarians: The Accidental Keyhand, by Jen Swann Downey

The Ninja Librarians: The Accidental Keyhand, by Jen Swann Downey (Sourcebooks Jaberwocky, April 2014, middle grade) is a zesty romp of a read that I thoroughly enjoyed; really truly thoroughly enjoyed.  Stripped to its barest bones, the plot might seem an old chestnut, but here the old bones are made fresh and new.  To wit:

Old Bone 1:  There is a secret society of time travellers trying to set history "right" and a bad society working against them.

But these time travellers are librarians (aka Lybrarians)!  Who combine mad shelving skills with mad sword fighting skills!  And who live in Petrarch's library where it's all a lovely geek and combat fest for both the residents and the reader, a place where books and scrolls are combined with swords and axes, and beautiful peaceful outdoor places and architecture of many times,  and tasty snacks (which appear when magically "read" from books.  (Not everyone can read snacks into material things; some can, for instance, make extinct auroches materialize).

And the Lybrarians mission of setting things right is focused on the preservation of knowledge and valuable writings!  They head back in time on dangerous missions to save books!  

Viz the bad society--they remain on the periphery for most of the book, which was fine with me because there was enough internal tension without dragging Good vs Evil into it.  And after all, epic confrontations don't have to happen every day.

Old Bone 2: two kids from our time stumble into the secret society and find out they are special.  They make friends and enemies.  An alpha girl hates the girl main character.   The boy main character gets a crush on a pretty girl.

Well, yes, Dorrie and her older brother Marcus do fall into a Magical World, and they are kind of special.  They've opened a portal to our time, and are therefore the "keyhands" who can open it for others to travel through, and keyhands are a rather special type of librarian.

But no, Dorrie and Marcus aren't all that special, and the fact that they are keyhands actually irks many people rather a lot, and other people don't trust them, and they aren't particular ept at anything of particular value.  Dorrie, for instance, is a sword-fighter, but finds to her chagrin that the standards of 21st-century amature re-enactors are horribly low...

Despite their lack of obvious talents, Dorrie and Marcus get to make places for themselves at the library, grow up a bit, appreciate books more, and start acquiring useful fighting/stealth/ninja skills--which they have to put to the test at the end of the book when things get truly dicey.  (Dorrie gets lessons in sword fighting from Cyrano de Bergerac!)

Moving on to other lines of thought:

--The library, as seen in this book, is rather focused on European civilization (I hope gets broadened in subsequent books), but there are Lybrarians and apprentices from places besides Europe, including Dorrie's new best friend Ebba, whose parents are from Mali, and who almost (but not quite) gets enough page time to be a main character.

--Time travel qua time travel is the heart of the plot (people going back to deliberately change the past), but the lived experience of travelling into different times isn't important to this particular story (and it's time travel made easy with translation magic and wardrobe help).   That being said, the story does end with an emotional zing that's dependent on time travel....

Final thoughts:

The whole set up of the library is just FUN as all get out, and the story zips along just beautifully.   And though I kind of suspected a key plot twist, this in no way reduced my enjoyment.

Best of all in my mind (given the number of books that I have put aside in the past month) I was never once kicked out of the story because of the writing. Which means that either the plot was so fun I didn't notice infelicities, or the writing was very good, or, quite possibly, both.  I think this is my favorite middle grade fantasy of the year so far, and I look forward to more!

This week's round-up of middle grade fantasy and science fiction from around the blogs (4/20/14)

Welcome to this week's round-up of middle grade fantasy and science fiction from around the blogs!  Please let me know if I missed your post.

The Reviews

Boys of Blur, by N.D. Wilson, at Fuse #8

The Bravest Princess, by E.D. Baker, at The Flashlight Reader

The Carpet People, by Terry Pratchett, at alibrarymama

Charmed Life, by Diana Wynne Jones, at Leaf's Reviews

Conrad's Fate, by Diana Wynne Jones, at Leaf's Reviews

Diego's Dragon, by Kevin Gerard, at Middle Grade Mafioso

The Dyerville Tales, by M.P. Kozlowsky, at Random Musings of a Bibliophile

Ever After High: The Storybook of Legends, by Shannon Hale, at Literary Omnivore

The Forbidden Library, by Django Wexler, at On Starships and Dragon Wings, Writer of Wrongs, and The Book Zone (For Boys)

Game of Clones, by M.E. Castle, at Ms. Yingling Reads

The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom, by Christopher Healy, at Sharon the Librarian (audiobook review)

Key to Kashdune, by Claudia White, at A Woman's Wisdom

The Last of the Dragons and some others, by E. Nesbit, at Jean Little Library

The Lives of Christopher Chant, by Diana Wynne Jones, at Leaf's Reviews

Lost Children of the Far Islands, by Emily Raabe, at Charlotte's Library

The Merman and the Moon Forgotten, by Kevin McGill, at This Kid Reviews Books

The Ninja Librarians: The Accidental Keyhand, by Jen Swann Downey, at Fanboynation

Northwood, by Brian Falkner, at The Book Monsters

The Orphan of Awkward Falls, by Keith Graves, at Good Books and Good Wine

The Pinhoe Egg, by Diana Wynne Jones, at Leaf's Reviews and Tales of the Marvelous

The Riverman, by Aaron Starmer, at 100 Scope Notes

Rose and the Lost Princess, by Holly Webb, at Debz Bookshelf (giveaway)

The School for Good and Evil, by Soman Chainani, at Fairytale Fandom

The Shadow Throne, by Jennifer Nielsen, at Cracking the Cover and Becky's Book Reviews

The Shadowhand Covenent, by Brian Farrey, at Book Nut

Smasher, by Scott Bly, at Charlotte's Library

The Spindlers, by Lauren Oliver, at Supernatural Snark

Suitcase of Stars, by Pierdomenico Baccalario, at Librarian of Snark

The Twistrose Key, by Tone Almhiell,  at Log Cabin Library

Who Could That Be At This Hour? by Lemony Snicket, at Reading the End

Witch Week, by Diana Wynne Jones, at Leaf's Reviews

Wonder Light, by R.R. Russell, at Sharon the Librarian


Authors and Interviews

Erin Cohn (Spirit's Key) at OneFour KidLit

Soman Chainani (A World Without Princes) at The Children's Book Review and The Enchanted Inkpot

R.R. Russell (Wonder Light) at The Hiding Spot

Delia Sherman (The Freedom Maze) at Big Blue Marble Blog


Other Good Stuff

Conversations about diversity were popping up all over last week, such as this post on Race, Power, and Publishing

For fans of the Queen's Thief series-Megan Whalen Turner has agreed to a video interview; if you have any questions for her you can submit them here.

It's Fairy Tale Fortnight; you can join the fun at this link up post at A Backwards Story

The pictures are copyrighted, I assume, but click through to see Fantasy Fiction Made Real aka a 13 year old Mongolian girl and the golden eagle she hunts with.   (Me--I would launch my eagle, my eagle would take off, and I would fall backward off the rocks.  Sigh).

And finally, here's a happy Easter greeting from days of yore, which I like because it shows the sport of rabbit jumping might be older than we had thought....

The Martian, by Andy Weir

The Martian, by Andy Weir (Random House 2014), was delightfully gripping.  The basic premise--Mark Watney is an astronaut abandoned on Mars after his spacesuit is punctured by a rouge antenna during a storm.  His crewmates, in a desperate hurry to leave the planet before it's too late for them all, are sure he is dead.  But he's not.

And now he is stuck on Mars, alone.  The next manned mission won't arrive for four years; he has food for only a few months.  He has no way to communicate with Earth.   But Watney is nothing if not resourceful, and he refuses to give in....

What follows is a harrowing survival story, in which human ingenuity is pitted against an environment where the smallest mistake can become deadly.    Basically, it's a grown-up version of My Side of the Mountain on Mars, and I enjoyed it very much.

Mostly it's told in Watney's log entries (in which he records all the various technical jury-rigging and repurposing projects that fill his days--don't try these at home), but when he finally manages to communicate with Earth, we get to see how NASA desperately does what it can to rescue him, and how the whole planet becomes riveted by what's happening out on Mars.   A lot of what concerns Watney is fairly technical, and I confess I read lightly over his engineering endeavours.  But I was riveted by his potato farming adventures--Watney is a biologist, as well as an engineer, and the 12 potatoes that flew to Mars for Thanksgiving turn out to be life-savers (composting for the win!).

I was sad this nearish-future vision of the scientific world hadn't made many strides with regard to the inclusion of women as full fledged geeks- true, the commander of the original mission is female, but NASA command is still pretty much all male.  And there were two gratuitous bits of nerd culture slamming that I wish hadn't been there (Watley wonders why one crew member is a nerd when she is so beautiful, and the PR woman at NASA sneers at colleagues who reference the Council of Elrond, which she's never heard of).  But I guess it's believable; attitudes take a while to change.

There's some strong language (the first sentence, for instance, is "I'm pretty much f***ed"), but I'd be comfortable giving it to my own eight-grader because there's really no point in pretending he doesn't know the f word at this point.

Anyway, I pretty much read it in a single sitting, and recommend it enthusiastically to anyone who enjoys harrowing survival stories that are chock full of science--instructive as well as entertaining.  And of course it could conceivably described as "a testament to the indomitable will of the human spirit" etc. etc. which is, you know, not a bad thing in thing to be reading in these difficult times when one's own spirit might be daunted by all there is to do at home and work.  At least I don't have to combine hydrogen and oxygen in the kitchen in order to wash the dishes.

Smasher, by Scott Bly

Smasher, by Scott Bly (Blue Sky Press, March, 2014, middle grade)

The future is in jeopardy--a madman who has managed to combine incredible technology with the psychic energies of nature (the Hum) is about to enslave mankind by with an infections cocktail of computer code and manipulated DNA. In the 16th century, a boy named Charlie can manipulate the hum even more wonderfully than the madman in the future.  And Charlie's ability to solve puzzles has been honed to a razors edge by his grandfather, and his survival instincts have been honed to a razors edge by fear of bullies and inquisitors....

Travelling between the two times is a girl named Geneva, a robot with miraculous powers of her own.   She comes to get Charlie, and take him to the future, where the two will stand together as last hope for humanity.  (There's a dog too, a very nice indeed puppy with enhancements of her own....there's also an enhanced gorilla, which you don't see that often, but he plays a relatively minor role).

And there's plenty of action, as the bad guy and his minions try to hunt down Charlie and Geneva, and they try to escape while foiling.

It was an enjoyable read, and it's a very good introduction to that fine speculative fiction question of how human a robot can be.  I liked Geneva very much!  Charlie was fine too, but with a relatively straightforward, what you see is what you get, character.  Geneva comes with Mysteries and Questions. 

This is one I'm happy to recommend to kids of ten and eleven or so, moving into sci fi action books.  It offers a nice serving of age-appropriate violence, which is to say there are deaths, and torture, but not disturbingly graphic, and balanced by a lot of sewer-related discomfort.   (Even if a kid's read The Hunger Games  and Ender's Game already, I don't think there's any reason to hurry toward ever more violence.)  However, there is considerable cruelty toward animals, which the bad guy is manipulating in  his lab of evil--this could well cause distress!

The action is balanced by dashes of (not tremendously subtle) philosophy about good vs evil, and by the friendship between Geneva and Charlie, which was a pleasure to read about.  And I think the time travel element will appeal to that audience as well--there's a friendliness to a protagonist who's plunked, like the reader, into a strange and alien landscape where much is confusing at first.

That being said, I myself found the time slip element unsatisfactory.  There's not a lot of time spent in the 16th century, and were it not for the fact that we are told the year is 1542, there's really no way to know.   Likewise, I felt Charlie's easy acceptance of the future somewhat unconvincing.  (It's also hard for me not to care about details like names--as I know the name Charles hadn't made it across the English Channel yet....and how can a boy living in a remote mountain village have three tutors, unless he's the aristocracy, which he doesn't seem to be?).

I also wasn't quite satisfied with the back story--when I'm told right at the beginning of the book that the protagonist's harsh grandfather has blood on his hands, and is apparently a murderer, I expect this to be explained, if not resolved, clearly and with conviction, and (even though I read fast I don't think I missed anything) the details stayed pretty murky.

But I don't think my two issues are the sort that will affect the reading pleasure of the target audience, especially the target audience for fast-paced sci-fi excitement.  Especially recommended for the computer geek kid-coding plays a bit part in the story!

Here's the Kirkus review.

Disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Lost Children of the Far Islands, by Emily Raabe, with thoughts on how I judge "kids with destiny" stories

Lost Children of the Far Islands, by Emily Raabe (Knopf, April 2014), is a middle grade fantasy that takes the magical creatures of the oceans around the British Isles and transplants them to the coastal waters of Maine.   It's the story of three siblings who find themselves visited one night by a mysterious messenger, and taken out to sea to the island far off the coast where their grandmother lives....where they find that they are shapeshifters, able to take seal form.  And they find (much more disturbingly!) that their destiny is to take part in a age old battle against the darkest creature of them all--a destroyer who wants to ravage the oceans until there is no life left.

I found it a gripping, fast read that I was able to enjoy even in the midst of a frenzied, stressful week, and I appreciated the fact that it stands alone just fine (there's one unanswered question, but it doesn't materially affect this particular story).

When I read a book about children in our world facing off against ancient folkloric evil, I have a rubric (which I am putting into words for the first time here, so I might well be missing something obvious!) by which I judge it.  Here's how Lost Children of the Far Islands came out in my mind.

1.  Are the young protagonists distinct people, or simply child-shaped spaces?  The kids here are two almost 11-year-old twins, a girl (Gus) and a boy (Leo), and their little sister, Ila.  The story's told mostly from Gus's point of view, but the other two gets some page time as well.  Gus is a girl primary character of the sort whose gender is a non-issue-- if you want your random boy to read books with girls, this is one that won't present problems in that regard.

All three kids are all individuals, especially young Ila, who is tremendously vibrant (she can also shapeshift into fox form, and I have a fondness for young fox shifters).   There are tensions between the siblings that all of us who have siblings can relate to just fine.  The kids have interests and personality traits that set them apart which for the most part become clear organically in the story, as opposed to traits that appear blatantly pinned on the character by the authorial hand.

2.  Is there a reason for these particular kids being the ones that have to help save the world?   I like to have a clear sense that only these particular characters are in the position to do what needs to be done, and I like it when "specialness" is balanced by a dash of reality.  Harry Potter is convincing as a hero because he has so much support; likewise Will Stanton from The Dark is Rising couldn't have done squat alone.    I get especially nervous when a prophecy is involved (as is the case here), not just because so many fictional prophecies are truly tortured verse (this one was unobjectionable), but because there's often not a satisfying reason why a particular character is the Destined Child of Prophecy.  I think destiny is a fine thing, and can be a good source of character tension, but sometimes I can't help but feel that prophecies are window dressings.  And if I'm not clear that there's a reason it's these particular kids by about a third of the way through the story, it's hard for me to care.

Lost Children of the Far Islands passes this test just fine. The kids aren't simply plunked down into the middle of Destiny...it sneaks up on them with a nicely growing sense of danger, and they have to discover secrets about their mother, and their ancient grandmother, before realizing what exactly they are part of.  Likewise, the catalyst for confrontation comes not from the playing out of predestined roles, but because something goes wrong--there is a betrayal--which is more satisfying, I think.

3.  Are the mythological elements made into something fresh and convincing?  Does the fantasy make sense?   I think in metaphors, and I'm finding myself thinking of this question in Christmasy terms--the single tree, made beautiful, as opposed to the sensory overwhelmingness of Christmas-tree land box stores, too shiny-full for any coherent story to emerge.   This test is also passed just fine--  Emily Raabe doesn't try to bring every single last bit of Celtic mythology into the story--she sticks pretty much to the mythological creatures, and they fill the story just fine.

4.  (This one might be just a matter of personal taste)  Is there a reason for the places that are important in the story to be those places, and are the places described in such a way as to make clear pictures in my mind?  My favorite part of this book was the time spent on the mysterious far island where the magical grandmother lives--it is a lovely island, with lost mundane treasures and a library holding a far from mundane book.   It's not at all clear to me why all the magical opposition of good and evil should have ended up off the coast of Maine, instead of home in the British Isles, but this didn't bother me enough to be an actual objection.

So in short, Lost Children of the Far Island is a fine story, though best, I think, for those that don't already have tons and tons of fantasy under their belts already.  It's one I'll offer to my ten year old, who has yet to meet any seal folk in his reading, but I don't think it's appeal goes far beyond that target audience, which isn't a criticism, just a reality.  I think that to be a book for grown-ups to truly love, there has to be something of the numinous--the sort of magical beauty that leave the reader stunned--and that's a very rare thing indeed, so much so that I don't even include it in my list of mental criteria.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher