This round of Required Reading is dedicated to the place we at Powell's Books call home: the great Pacific Northwest. Whether you're from the area or you simply appreciate the region for its beauty, history, temperament, or legendary bookstore, these titles will give you a more nuanced understanding of this peculiar corner of the U.S. [...]
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 3 of 3
Blog: PowellsBooks.BLOG (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: David Guterson, Required Reading, Chuck Palahniuk, Miranda July, Robin Cody, Ken Kesey, Matt Love, Gretchen Mcneil, Cherie Priest, Peter Rock, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Chelsea Cain, Jerry Thompson, Ken Babbs, Madeline Ashby, Don Carpenter, Charles Burns, Brian Doyle, Alexis Smith, Molly Gloss, Robert Michael Pyle, Katherine Dunn, rene denfeld, Brent Walth, Benjamin Hoff, Opal Whiteley, J. D. Chandler, G. M. Ford, david james duncan, Don Berry, Kent Anderson, Richard Brautigan, Sherman Alexie, Willy Vlautin, Ursula K. Le Guin, Yasmine Galenorn, Tom Robbins, Tobias Wolff, S M Stirling, Stewart Hall Holbrook, Add a tag
Blog: PowellsBooks.BLOG (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: David Guterson, Sherman Alexie, Willy Vlautin, Required Reading, Chuck Palahniuk, Miranda July, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robin Cody, Ken Kesey, Matt Love, Gretchen Mcneil, Cherie Priest, Peter Rock, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Yasmine Galenorn, Chelsea Cain, Jerry Thompson, Ken Babbs, Madeline Ashby, Don Carpenter, Charles Burns, Brian Doyle, Tom Robbins, Alexis Smith, Molly Gloss, Robert Michael Pyle, Katherine Dunn, rene denfeld, Brent Walth, Benjamin Hoff, Opal Whiteley, J. D. Chandler, Tobias Wolff, G. M. Ford, david james duncan, Don Berry, Kent Anderson, Richard Brautigan, S M Stirling, Stewart Hall Holbrook, Add a tag
This round of Required Reading is dedicated to the place we at Powell's Books call home: the great Pacific Northwest. Whether you're from the area or you simply appreciate the region for its beauty, history, temperament, or legendary bookstore, these titles will give you a more nuanced understanding of this peculiar corner of the U.S. [...]
Blog: A Fuse #8 Production (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: 2010 reviews, 2010 fantasy, 2010 science fiction, Joshua Middleton, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Uncategorized, Add a tag
Thresholds
By Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Viking (an imprint of Penguin)
$15.99
ISBN: 978-0-670-06319-2
Ages 9-12
On shelves August 5th.
I like to characterize trends with great all-encompassing, massive statements that fail to take into account exceptions to the rule. For example, after reading Thresholds by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, my instinct is to throw my hands wide and pronounce to the world, “2010 is the year of young adult authors writing for children and finding that in doing so they acquire a whole new audience and fanbase.” I root this statement in only one other 2010 book (One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia) but one is good enough for me. Nina Kiriki Hoffman has at least twelve YA books under her belt, but until now she has shied away from middle grade fare. With Thresholds she changes her game, offering a fantasy (or is it science fiction?) that taps into the dual early adolescent desires of bonding with something friendly and powerful and befriending the outcasts that prove cooler than everybody else.
You should probably know three things about Maya right from the outset. First off, her best friend Stephanie recently died and Maya’s family has moved so as to help their daughter cope. Second, Stephanie has found herself living next to a house where the denizens come and go in odd fashions, play strange instruments, and speak in tongues she doesn’t always understand. Third, there was a fairy in her room recently. It happened one night when Stephanie probably should have been asleep. No one would think much of it either, were it not for the fact that because of the strange fairy’s scent an odd boy decides that he can trust Maya. Next thing she knows she has a strange magical egg embedded under the skin of her wrist, and her neighbors are the only ones who can help her. Now Maya, like it or not, has gotten caught up in their world. The only question now is what’s in that egg and what will happen when it decides to hatch?
The blurb for this book that caught my eye is “Ingrid Law’s Savvy as seen through the eyes of a young Ray Bradbury.” I love that they had to put that “a young” in there. Old Ray Bradbury would be a whole different ballgame, of course. Mind you, it’s an interesting statement above and beyond the age designation of one of the nation’s greatest science fiction writers. First off, the blurb pairs two different genres together. Savvy is a Newbery Honor winning fantasy about a girl who receives a special power (like the rest of her family) at the age of thirteen. Ray Bradbury, on the other hand, is a master of science fiction. Put the two together and you would expect to find a book that appeals to both sci-fi and fantasy fans equally. No mean task. To my mind, I suppose that Thresholds could be characterized as sci-fi. Everything has a logical dimension. Just the same, as a general rule, when you open your first chapter with a girl discovering a fairy, folks are going to label you fantasy whether or not there’s a scientific practicality to that fairy being there.
The real reason I think they decided to compare this book
Hmm…I can’t say that I share your enthusiasm for the uniqueness of the cover. I like Middleton’s work, but this had a nagging familiarity to me, and I’m not completely sure why. It definitely reminded me of Abby Carnelia’s One and Only Power, and maybe a little of something else.