I rarely write here about aviation matters but if you're interested in airline safety then you need to read the WSJ article up today on the Buffalo crash. Every time someone mentions a cheap air fare on a commuter I shake my head. I don't think most people realize how incredibly low paying the pilot jobs are in the commuters - I doubt the co-pilot in the Buffalo crash was making $20,000 a year. Here's a bit of the WSJ piece:

The crew initially didn't notice the plane's speed had dropped dangerously low, sliding under 115 miles an hour, and risked going into a stall. The slowing speed set off an emergency system called a "stick-pusher," which pushes the control column down in order to send the aircraft into a temporary dive so it can regain speed and recover from a stall.

However, Capt. Renslow tried to force the plane to do the opposite. He yanked back on the controls while adding thrust. His effort was strong enough to manually override the stick-pusher. Within seconds, the plane lost lift, bucked violently and started to roll. It slammed into a house five miles from the runway.

Colgan's standard training program stops short of demonstrating the operation of the stick-pusher in flight simulators. Without such hands-on experience, safety investigators argue, pilots could be surprised and not react properly when the stick-pusher activates during an emergency. The FAA is required to sign off on all airline training manuals.

They should have hands-on training with the stick-pusher response and I bet in the wake of this crash there will be a new rule requiring all airlines operating aircraft with this technology must do so. As for the captain's response, well I'm not surprised. Everyone I knew in the industry called this one pilot error from the very beginning.

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I've been working on several projects lately, beyond the regular reading and writing. First up, the Summer Blog Blast Tour is scheduled for the week of May 18th. I have two interviews done - with Melissa Wyatt, author of the great new YA title Funny How Things Change (my June column) and Andrew Mueller, foreign correspondent and author of I Wouldn't Start From Here (which I loved and reviewed in my March column - written for adults and older teens). I'm also hoping to have an interview with my friend Jenny Davidson about the research for her YA alt history title The Explosionist and its sequel, not yet published, The Snow Queen. There are eleven blogs participating this time with about twenty-five interviews. As always, we hope our readers will find plenty to enjoy.

Next week I will be unveiling the first big project from Guys Lit Wire. I've been working with InsideOut Writers for several months and along with the GLW crew we have put together a list of books at Powells for the first Guys Lit Wire Book Fair for Boys. We are embarking on what we hope to be a long term relationship with InsideOut to benefit the teenage boys incarcerated in the LA Country juvenile justice system. Right now the teens in LA County Juvenile Hall, over 70% of whom are boys, do not have a library and most have little access to books (only if they are given to them by someone). What we want to do is bring some attention to the fact that these boys basically have no books, that they desperately need books and what InsideOut Writers has been doing to help them for the past thirteen years. We hope to slowly and steadily, over book fairs held semiannually, build a library for their use. We also hope to involve the boys in our site, and expose their reviews to the lit blogosphere. I will admit though that I am very nervous about this - nervous that as much as I hope it will work, that in times like these when presented with the request to buy books for kids in juvenile hall a lot of folks might find it easy to ignore.

I'll help someone, they might think, but not them.

And we are going with Powells for our wishlist which means no registry address and everyone will have to type in the mailing address themselves (this info will be in the post next week at GLW). It's an extra step and that might be too much as well. The GLW crew pushed very very VERY hard to buy from an indy seller however (I thought amazon would be easier and thus a better bet to get a bigger response). And that's important to them and to who we want to be and who we want to support. But man, I hope it works - I hope a lot for this. My goal is 100 books bought in two weeks - all of them are paperback (they have to be) and there is the used option at Powells so for $10 with shipping someone can buy a book. But what if it fails? What if everyone is just "cared out"? Anyway, as excited as I am at the project I'm also worried. I want GLW to matter and this is a step towards that. Big dreams, big leaps of faith, scary stuff. But still - you don't get anywhere without trying, right?

For this summer I'm hoping to shake things up just a bit here at Chasing Ray with an occasional series "What a Girl Wants". This comes a bit from my own curiosity about books for teenage girls and how so many of them are so similar. While I read a lot of teen romance/teen angst when I was in high school I'm starting to wonder if that was because I wanted to or just because that was pretty much the only option. I loved mysteries and started reading John D. MacDonald and Robert Parker in high school but what I would have loved for sure was a modern teen girl detective. I also would have liked more SF with girls, and more interesting history about women and beyond all that, I never read a book with a minority teen character in the lead when I was a teen. I know they were there (had to be right?) but there were so few they were easy to overlook or ignore. All of this has been swirling around in my head a lot lately and as much as teen boys are my focus through GLW, I'm interested in exploring books for girls as well. So, I'm reaching out to various authors of books that would interest girls (whether aimed at them directly or not) and over the summer I'm going to throw a question their way and run the answers here. Just one question at a time, either about what they like to read, what interests them personally or what they think might work or not for girls. Stuff like that. It's a virtual round table on a big broad subject that will continue for months. I like the idea of one question to a group so they can opt in or out if they are busy and so it is easy to read the answers and see the variety of opinions in a relatively quick perusal. Summers get so slow in the lit blogosphere so I think this will be a cool different low key alternative to waiting on the fall titles.

And finally - my books. I talked to Michele (agent chick) and she says there are increasing signs of life in the publishing world (as in editors are calling her and asking for stuff to read) so after a quick shaping up of my first chapter, Map of My Dead Pilots is about to go out for another round. It's a good time now, I think, to be trying to sell - much better than eight months ago for sure. Some of the editors who turned the book down have been laid off so we will try some pubs again (different eds) and others as well. Alaska is still a popular subject and thanks to the Hudson landing, aviation is even more popular. I'm still trying regardless, and Michele is still jazzed.

And that's the update, so there you go. Now back to reading T.S. Spivet and Deeply Rooted, an excellent look at three independent modern farmers and So Punk Rock from Micol Ostow. I'm also reading Clear Heart which was self-published by Joe Cottonwood and is the clearest peek I've ever seen into the hearts and minds of men (who in this case are carpenters/contractors). Thus far all of them are great which personally I think I deserved after my last reading experience.

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Okay, in reading the new issue of Booklist I started to see something really odd among several of the new adult titles. Take a look at this:

Huge by James Fuerst, Crown. (Starred Review): "The name is “Huge,” or so Eugene Smalls insists. But folks persist in applying the diminutive, since the 12-year-old is the smallest boy in his sixth-grade class. Small but mean. And tough. And hard-boiled. Just like his hero, Philip Marlowe. The wannabe detective is thrilled when his grandma hires him to find out who has defaced the sign at her retirement home. But Huge has, ahem, huge problems—anger management being only one—and his investigations may take him to dark places he’d rather not visit."

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, Delacorte. (Starred Review): "Sweetness introduces a charming and engaging sleuth who is only 11 years old. Flavia is one of three precocious and extremely literate daughters being raised by English widower Colonel de Luce in 1950. Flavia’s passion is chemistry (with a special interest in poisons). She is able to pursue her passion in the fully equipped Victorian laboratory in Buckshaw, the English mansion where the de Luce family lives. The story begins with a dead snipe (with a rare stamp embedded on its beak) found on the back doorstep. This is followed by a dead human body in the garden and, later, by a poisonous custard pie. Revelations about the mysterious past of Colonel de Luce complicate matters. Others supporting players include the housekeeper, Mrs. Mullet, and the gardener, Dogger, who suffers from shell shock. When Colonel de Luce is arrested for murder, it’s up to Flavia to solve the mystery. "

The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan, Canongate: "Every night in her dreams, Gwenni flies high above her Welsh village, looking at the lives unfolding beneath her and hearing the earth’s melodic hum. The sky is her sanctuary until one night the 12-year-old sees something puzzling and deeply disturbing. The very next day Ifan Evans, the chapel deacon and husband of Gwenni’s teacher, mysteriously goes missing. Intrigued, Gwenni decides to turn detective and determine the man’s whereabouts."

The Selected Works of TS Spivet by Reif Larsen, Penguin (Starred Review): "The son of a laconic Montana rancher and a noted, if absentminded, coleopterist, 12-year-old prodigy Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet draws diagrammatic maps (e.g., zoological, geological, topographical) as well as maps of people shucking corn or chopping wood, drainage patterns, and a city’s electricity grid usage. The Smithsonian has been accepting illustrations, schematics, charts, and maps from T. S. for some time when Mr. Jibsen calls him to say that T. S. has won the prestigious Baird Award for the popular advancement of science and is invited to D.C. to give a speech. Thus begins T. S.’s odyssey, and a surreal, mind-bending one it is, for sure."

So does anyone see a pattern here? Each one of these books (three of them starred reviews!) were published for adult readers. It used to be that we talked about teen protagonists crossing over to adult readers (Hello Blue Van Meer) but this - this is really interesting. What is it that makes eleven and twelve year olds so suddenly appealing to adults? Is it just the assumption that sex or romance won't be part of the plots and the authors can focus on other things? I'm reading T.S. Spivet right now and enjoying it quite alot but so far I can't see why the protagonist has to be twelve - he could just as easily be sixteen. (I'm thinking the Smithsonian would be just as freaked to find out a high school kid was making their art.) I understand authors are writing the books that they want to write and not worrying so much about audience when they write them and choose their protags (I do believe Colson Whitehead on that score) but am I missing something or is there a serious juvenile trend going on here? I mean YA/adult crossovers are one thing but MG/adult crossovers? That's getting weird.

I mean really.

I"m not saying that adults can't enjoy a book with a child protagonist - we all know and love Tom Sawyer and Scout and all those other classics that have stood the test of time and that's great. But this whole teen trend thing that seemed such a big deal with Special Topics in Calamity Physics is starting to look like vamp novels look in YA. In other words these preternaturally smart children are starting to crop up everywhere and I wish I knew why. Do we really need 12 year olds to solve crime now? I know there are some wickedly smart kids out there (they show up later as adults commenting on blogs with claims that they read Lord of the Rings when they were like five) but most of the ones I have known are overly concerned about having the right shoes, watching their favorite shows and whining about everything. Lately my eleven year old niece cares only about texting her friends and asking them what they are doing. No one is ever doing anything but they still feel compelled to ask each other constantly. (And she can't even go to the local Fred Meyers alone so solving crime seems a bit beyond her capabilities.)

I would not want anyone in her group to be responsible for clearing me of murder charges.

I guess what you have here are characters that are deemed by someone to be too smart for readers their own age, apparently not sexy or smart assed enough for readers a couple of years older, but so quirky they endear themselves to adult readers who want to reminisce about the child they think they were. For the record I like TS Spivet because I am a big fan of maps and illustrated novels. (See Barbara Hodgson's titles for more examples.) I am not pursuing my literary childhood ideal. I swear. Really. (REALLY!)

But what the heck is everybody doing reading these books? And who decides that liking these books makes you literary but admiring Gilda Joyce makes you an adult who refuses to grow up? (There's a new Gilda novel out next week by the way - The Dead Drop. I haven't heard a thing about this one until I saw it in Booklist where it got a very positive review.) I don't even care who they are written for anymore, now I'm more into the marketing. It's like the dumbing down of America's juveniles or something - all the really smart kids have to be in books written for adults.

Okay, that's not true but still, I wish I knew how child protags for adults vs child protags for children are chosen. It almost makes me want to read all of these books just to see what they've got in common. Almost but not quite. Maybe I'll just wait and see what wunderkid novels show up in the next issue of Booklist. There better not be any seven year olds...I have one of those of my own and believe me, it won't work, I don't care how quirky the kid is.

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Picked up first by Jenny D. and then by Gwenda, Nicola Tesla's original laboratory is under threat of destruction. I'm stunned to hear it is still standing (he sold it in 1917) and that it still has some of his original equipment. There is a movement underway to buy the property and I hope they succeed (sounds like they will), The best part of all this? The potential for underground tunnels! How cool is that?! (I totally hope Kirsten Miller is all over this revelation.) Read more at the Tesla Memorial Society of NY.

A do-it-yourself John McPhee course syllabus (alas - without the advice of the master however). I read Coming Into the Country for one of my grad school classes and liked it a lot. I'd love to know how McPhee chooses his subjects to study; he must be an amazing teacher.

The Edgar awards were announced recently and I was quite pleased to see Tony Abbott's The Postcard win the juvenile category. I reviewed this one last year and it remains one of the better MG/YA mysteries I've read in a long time. It is also set in FL which is a bonus for my childhood self and I can attest to the authenticity of Abbott's research. He nails it - and I've been to many of the places he writes about. It's a great summer reading book; grab it for a kid you know and I'm sure they will be grateful. (I must say though the tpb cover is appalling - the hc was much much better.)

Colson Whitehead found himself in the "do you respect YA or not" nightmare recently. Poor man. He emailed with Ed and seems to have explained himself quite well. Honestly, I think he just got blindsided. It probably never occurred to him that his book could be YA because none of his other books are and he wasn't even thinking that way when it wrote it. YA reviewers might think it is (it centers on a teen protagonist) but I imagine he just went with what his pub decided. Plus who knows - the guy might not have read a book written for teens in 20 years so if all his YA contact is from the media he probably thinks it's a bunch of Harry Potter, Twilight and Gossip Girls. (This is not so impossible when you think about it.) Anyway I for one am TIRED of fighting this battle. Colson Whitehead wrote a book and it sounds good and maybe it will crossover and teens will read it and they will like it. Let's all move on now, shall we? (Over at the Booklist blog, Donna also thought this was a bunch of foolishness.)

Sherman Alexie's interview with Margo Rabb is still up at failbetter and really, if you haven't gotten over there to read it, you should. What broke my heart:

Oh, man. When I got the news my father died I actually collapsed. That’s the first time I fell or fainted when I heard news of somebody’s death. I cried hard. I’m not over it. Not even remotely. So I guess…I healed as a kid. But now…I mean last night at a reading I gave, a kid asked me that question: “How are you dealing with your dad’s death?” I said, “Obviously not very well!” My sister died so long ago…29 years ago. It almost feels like an entirely different person who lost her. And I didn’t know her that well—she was quite a bit older than me, she was out of the house, she was married…so she’s a series of impressions at this point. I don’t even know how accurate they are. She’s almost become mythology.

Margo has more with Sherman ("outtakes") at her blog. My favorite bit from there:

Zombies or unicorns?

"I’m a zombie guy. I have a t-shirt of Big Foot wrestling a unicorn."

I was writing a post the other day for Voices on an upcoming book about post Katrina New Orleans (A Paradise Built in Hell, due from Penguin in August) and I kept thinking the author, Rebecca Solnit, sounded familiar. I googled her and discovered she has written several articles for Orion where I immediately recognized her work. So then I looked a bit further in google and found this review of a past book in the Village Voice where Solnit is referred to as "wander woman" and an "apprentice to the world at large, she has made a life's work out of scavenging for connections." I have decided that she is now officially a literary hero. The local library has a couple of her books so I'm looking forward to reading more.

The new issue of Bookslut is up - in case you missed it. My column this month is on science fiction and fantasy and was not easy to write. I actually requested a few books that never got to me which was a disappointment - because there were a ton of fantasy titles in particular that I did not want which were sent. (Sigh.) On the up side, I ended up with a great mix of books that I don't think have been covered much elsewhere and I did enjoy reading all of them. Also LOVED my "cool reads" both by the divine Sy Montgomery (certainly another literary hero).

I also reviewed The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire by CM Mayo, a beautiful book any fan of historical fiction should check out.

[Post pic of Tesla's lab as it currently looks in Long Island.]

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This entry has spoilers........

I finally got around to reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl in the last week and I have to say that it was one of the most frustrating books I've read in a long time. I was sorely tempted just to quit - honestly I wanted to just quit it several times - but the mystery that Pessl dangles in the opening chapter about the suicide of "Hannah" kept me going. Through all the witty asides - through the endlessly witty asides - I kept reading to see just what the hell happened to Hannah. After awhile I really didn't like Blue (the protagonist) or any of the kids she hung out with (none of whom liked Blue much either) or Hannah or Blue's father who has to be one of the fakest characters ever created in fiction.

I'm sorry - I don't care how much of a literature snob you are, no one talks like that man.

But I persevered to see why Hannah died and how it affected Blue. And then I got to the end and WHAT THE HELL?!!! That is how it ends? It's a camping trip and then a rewrite of the history of The Weathermen and that's it? We go from teen angst to leftover 1960s melodrama? (And I'm talking serious melodrama; it's unprecedented melodrama.) What a bad ending - what a crazy, unsupportable, insane ending. But beyond that, completely ignoring the ending, I still have issues with this book. Remove all the snarky asides and many many (many many) literary references and you've still got some serious plot issues. At first I liked the references that Blue makes for literally everything but after awhile that did get old. I can see how some people would enjoy them however, so that's fine - something different that might appeal more to some readers than others but [relatively] easy to ignore. But the story itself is another matter; let's consider the story.

In the beginning we have the death bombshell and then the book moves back in time to the set up for that death. Fair enough. But the book quickly descends into the story of teenage school dramarama which, quite frankly, a lot of other authors have done a lot better. We are supposed to believe that Blue is a brilliant teenager (hence all those literary references) but she still falls for the quick appeal of the school's cool kids and is willing to be psychologically abused by them (ignored, made fun of, made to feel stupid) on a weekly basis because....well, that's the problem. Why in the hell does Blue put up with these jerks? I can see getting fooled once and thinking they like her but once you work out that they are the school's mean girls (girls and guys but you get the point) then any smart teen would be done. If you want to play Harmony to Pessl's Cordelia then that is one thing but Blue is not, in any way shape or form, set up to be Harmony and this crew sure as hell ain't Cordelia (say what you want but at least she came through when it all went to hell - these kids are too busy being drunk to be redeemable). So readers have to believe that Blue just keeps hanging out with them, getting wasted with them, dressing up like them and basically lying to her father on a daily basis to be with them just cause.

Okay that really did not work for me.

For the entire book I kept trying to figure out why on earth Blue would fall for Jade and her friends. Just to impress school teacher Hannah who seemed to love these kids so much? But why? Why wasn't she making friends with some normal kids in the school - with other bright articulate kids (all of whom seem to be absent from this high school). And then I got a sneaking suspicion - Blue wasn't acting like any smart kid I have ever known (in the history of the world) because this book was not written by a former smart teen. This book was written by a mean girl and Blue is how the mean girls of the world think the smart girls of the world think and act.

In other words, Marisha Pessl wrote a stupid smart girl who acted totally against all of her instincts because mean girls think any smart girl (or boy) would do that to be one of them - even when you treat them like dirt in the process.

I asked a friend of mine recently if mean girls know they are mean girls. (She used to be a ballet dancer and later teacher so she has been around all sorts of teen girls for years.) She said yes they do - the problem is they don't realize how mean they are. So maybe Marisha Pessl doesn't realize how loathsome the teens are that she writes about in Special Topics - or more importantly how unlikely it is that any self-assured kid would hang in there with them for so long. (Or that she would lie to her father who she loves, or fall for the false magnetism of a teacher that everyone collectively agrees is batty as hell just because these cool kids like her.) Maybe Pessl just wanted to play a joke - a smartly crafted and unique joke but a joke nonetheless. This is what she thinks of everyone who gets all those literary references she piles on in the text - we think we're so smart when we read the book but she thinks we're just stupid.

Not so nice a read now, is it?

In the end I see Special Topics in Calamity Physics as cake - really big, really expensive, really impressive over-the-top cake. But there's a trick here because it is only on the surface that it looks good. Reach inside, cut it deep and you won't find any filling - it's just piles and piles of sticky sweet icing. There's no substance to this story and in the end, it leaves you feeling just a little bit sick.

Blue should have ditched them on day 1. That's what any true self respecting smart girl would do every time.

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One of the most appealing things about historical fiction for me is the opportunity to learn something I don’t know about people I’ve never heard of but really should have been taught at some point in my long and illustrious education. (Like when I was pursuing that four-year degree in, um, history.) There were several things about C. M. Mayo’s The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire that startled me when I first read about it, such as that Mexico was occupied by the French during the U.S. Civil War and that Louis Napoleon placed the Archduke of Austria, Maximilian von Habsburg, on the Mexican throne as Emperor. The facts that Maximilian did not want this job (he much preferred the life of a naturalist in Italy), that the Mexicans did not want the French or the Austrians anywhere near them, or that everyone involved had precious little clue as to what life in Mexico was like in the mid-19th century was all immaterial to France’s colonial ambitions. In the end you do have to give Louis Napoleon some credit – he managed to plunder the heck out of Mexico for several years at the price of some French soldiers and the sanity of Maximilian’s wife. For him it was a deal, for everyone else, especially the Mexican family whose son became the pseudo heir, the whole thing was a debacle.

Mayo has a big story to tell with the novel but wisely keeps it small by focusing on a few key players: Maximilian, his wife Charlotte, and the Mexican couple whose son would almost become a prince, Angelo Iturbide and his American wife, Alice. The Iturbides have their own convoluted history -- Angelo’s father was once emperor of Mexico but had to abdicate his self-imposed throne, and then returned from European exile to be executed by firing squad. Angelo and his family escaped to the U.S. where he eventually became secretary to the Mexican legation. After the French invaded the Iturbides were invited back to the country. Alice was happy to travel to her husband’s homeland where she embraced the Mexican culture and became a fixture on the new, and very royal, social scene.

By presenting the story in varying points of view, Mayo shows the many different goals pursued by the major characters. This becomes particularly interesting after the Iturbides sign over custody of their son to the Hapsburgs. While the motives of the royals have never completely been determined (they did not have children of their own and it is assumed that a Mexican prince was sought to endear them more to the people) the Iturbides hoped to obtain a superior education for their son and believed they would have continued intimate contact with him in spite of his new status. They also seem to have been a bit “royal struck,” not realizing perhaps what a perilous situation they were in when their little boy gained the Empress’s attention. They both immediately regretted the decision and as Mayo writes, in the months that followed Alice in particular was driven nearly mad with grief. The family suffered immediate unexpected exile and yet still fought their case before various international governments from the U.S. (who once the war was over had soldiers on the border to keep the French at bay) to the French to repeated entreaties addressed to Maximilian himself. As Alice became inconsolable, Maximilian disappeared into a fantasy of the life he could have had, and the young prince was lost in a shuffle of loyalties both personal and professional. The rebels move closer, Charlotte becomes increasingly more unhinged, the Iturbides are relentless in the pursuit of their son and Maximilian is paralyzed by an inability to accept what his life has become. All the while the political situation continues to heat up and everyone who is not Mexican finally realizes that maybe none of this occupation business was a good idea. In the final pages Mayo jumps forward so readers may learn what happened to everyone, while marveling how so much of this could ever have been possible in the first place.

The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire is a very compelling story with a ton of juicy history to savor. Mayo has an elegant style that weaves in and out of fact and fiction as she reaches into the minds of the major players and then deviates to introduce supporting characters (nearly all of them real as well). My only complaint is that occasionally the cast becomes too large and readers might need to pause for a moment to recall how everyone is related but this is a truly minor quibble when you consider the scope of the tale being told here. I am sure that I am only one of many Americans who know practically nothing of Mexican history (something Mayo reveals about herself in a sprawling author’s note at the end). After finishing this wonderful novel I have new respect for the trials suffered by our southern neighbor in the recent past and also a deep desire to learn more about so many of the names involved, not the least of which the little boy who almost became the future ruler of a nation.

The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire by C.M. Mayo
Unbridled Books
ISBN 1-932961-64-5
448 pages

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Having made myself nearly physically ill from the number of truly lame “I didn’t know I was really a vampire or a werewolf or a fairy or another previously unknown magical beast until I became a teenager and got sent off to boarding school” titles, I am perilously close to washing my hands of the whole genre. In an effort to still love fantasy, I have purposely cast the SFF net much wider to find titles that won’t sicken me or my readers. Lots of good stuff here -- and nothing that sounds like a Twilight copycat, I promise.

Mythology fans (and anyone who got a kick out of Harry Potter) should seek out Belinda Weber’s Fabulous and Monstrous Beasts. This oversized hardcover includes everything from the usual suspects (dragons, unicorns and mermaids) to those that rarely see face time in such titles (the chimera, harpies and cockatrice). What really sells it though is the combination of oversized, colorful illustrations (which include not only the creature of choice but also the area in which it lived or humans it interacted/fought with) and a big dose of history in small snippets explaining just how they came to be part of our culture. Weber also includes reproductions of objects such as plates, tapestries, sculptures, totem poles, etc., to show how the creatures have been depicted over the years.

I read Fabulous and Monstrous Beasts expecting to learn a bit but was impressed by how Weber tied so many different national histories into her overview. From King James VI of Scotland incorporating unicorns and lions into his royal insignia (showing unity between England and Scotland) to the statue of the “puushamriga” or Indian Sphinx, she has mined the world for fascinating information. Likely the coolest bits for most readers will be the ongoing mysteries, such as the 1951 photograph of a footprint of an abominable snowman on Everest or the photo from 1977 of a “sea monster” carcass off the coast of New Zealand (it looks nothing like a whale or giant squid). The author is forthright about the myths that have been disproven (the 1934 photo of Nessie is explained) but she leaves enough questions out there about others to stir a lot of curiosity among readers. Overall this is a splendid collection of history, mythology and even science that should spark a lot of further research.

Zetta Elliott’s time travel novel A Wish After Midnight is a bit of a revelation. You have an African American teen protagonist living in modern times who struggles in general with all the issues a single-parent household might face and in particular from having a selfish older brother and sister. Genna is a smart kid who loves Brooklyn but doesn’t like how tough life is becoming or how her mother is so ground down with worrying about (and overlooking the faults of) her brother and sister that she seems to give Genna an extra helping of difficult every chance she gets. The teen spends many of her afternoons at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden dreaming of some way to gain control of the chaos at home. When she meets the brilliant and charismatic Judah it seems that life will get better but instead things spiral out of control.

Any book where a black teenage girl travels back to the time of slavery is likely to face comparisons with Octavia Butler’s Kindred. Elliott is telling a very specific story here though -- one about Brooklyn and what it faced during the 1863 draft riots and also what it would mean to be a young black person alive in that specific place and time. Genna does suffer horribly when she travels back and Elliott doesn’t flinch from the realities of slavery. But more importantly, readers will find not a historical tale so much as a story about how a very contemporary teen would see that time and how she would react to it. I love that Genna is pragmatic enough not to sit around and whine for long. Life might be crazy but she still has to eat. (This is the same Genna as presented in the modern part of the story and it’s wonderful to see her not lose her mind when transported back.) She makes friends, finds work that puts a roof over her head, bites her tongue more than once and basically builds a life always hoping against hope that somehow she will get home to her Brooklyn again. When New York finally explodes, Genna gets swept away in the conflict between the have-nots and have-less. This is where Elliott really excels, showing the frustration of those who instigated that violence and the courage of those, black and white, who stood up to it. It’s vivid, violent and impressive history and just like Genna most teens will be shocked to see what happened in New York City, so far from the Civil War battlefields but scarred by war all the same.

A Wish After Midnight is a self-published book -- the first I have ever reviewed here. Hopefully a publisher interested in a coming-of-age story in the science fiction tradition of Butler, Connie Willis, and even Walter Mosley’s 47 will give Elliott the time and attention her work merits.

Oni Press has been publishing the graphic novel adventures of Ted Naifeh’s quirky heroine Courtney Crumrin for several years now and most recently issued a very unvampire vamp tale, Courtney Crumrin and the Prince of Nowhere. (Originally published as a standalone story it is now available in the collection Courtney Crumrin’s Monstrous Holiday.) This story is the antidote to everyone who is tired of seeing vampires portrayed as the answer to every teenage girl’s lovelorn dream and really wish that Buffy was around to stake Edward. (He wants to eat you, Bella! This is not a solid foundation to build a future on!) Courtney is a pragmatist who along with her relatively useless parents lives with her Great Uncle Aloysius in a house right out of Edward Gorey and surrounded by a variety of mysterious creatures like goblins. Courtney is not the weep and run type (if she was her vacuous parents would have driven her to severe depression years before). Through a succession of past adventures she has met challenges of all sorts, made a few friends (but not many) and deemed herself as someone of interest in the eyes of Uncle Aloysius. It is because of this that they have now embarked on a European vacation together. In Prince of Nowhere they arrive in Germany and visit Castle Krumrhein.

Courtney puts on a very brave front in all of her stories; she’s sarcastic and snarky and in the face of all sorts of badness she retains a sort of defiant fearlessness that is both brave and tired. Of course something bad is going to happen, she thinks, something bad always happens. (Shades of Buffy and the need to save the world yet again.) But in Prince of Nowhere she is tired and lonely. This vulnerability, which Naifeh has been preparing readers for from the very beginning, makes her a target for Wolfgang, a local she meets while touring the castle. Wolfgang, who has to be invited in before he can enter Courtney’s hotel room (we all know what that means…) understands her loneliness. He is not as you would expect though -- his source of despair is his mother who “sealed up her heart” after his father died. Wolfgang has also been let down by adults and he needs a friend. Courtney figures out pretty quick that the guy is a vamp but he is also the only one who seems to understand where she is coming from. Uncle Aloysius is too preoccupied and honestly just too old to identify on any level with a teenager in crisis. He expects her to buck up and work things out on her own but for once, Courtney is just not up to it. (“She felt,” Naifeh writes, “like a lost ship after all the continents had sunk under the sea.”)

Wolfgang shows Courtney around the castle and she finds herself identifying more with him then with anyone else she has ever known. The plot complicates when she finds out why her uncle came to this particular place and who he needs to meet. Choices must be made and for once, Courtney thinks about choosing for herself. But she goes in with her eyes wide open; she is not blinded by romantic thoughts. In the end she is herself, still braver than most, but unrelentingly realistic.

It is hard to classify Courtney as a hero (although she does fight her own battles) or an anti-hero (because she does think most of the battles thrust upon her are foolish). She is first and foremost a unique teen creation: a girl who thinks for herself, sees those around her clearly and is sorely disappointed with the inanity of how most of us live our lives. She chooses to be something more, which because her uncle is a sorcerer means she might become someone beyond her own comprehension, but she also wishes, in the deep recesses of her battered heart, that she could just be satisfied with smaller things. She would like to not be so utterly disappointed with how things have turned out so far. Courtney keeps hoping that her uncle will come through for her -- that he will be the one to reach out. In Prince of Nowhere she finally breaks through the wall and he sees her. What comes next, and it won’t be pretty because of what has happened, is anyone’s guess. But it also won’t be boring or predictable or, well, stupid. Because Courtney is none of those things and as such deserves a healthy teen following. (I should note the Courtney Crumrin titles are illustrated in black and white by Naifeh and excellently evocative of place and mood -- a perfect combination with the text.)

Elizabeth Bear’s new novella Seven for a Secret is a sequel to her alternate history saga, New Amsterdam. This time her vampire main character Sebastien and his companion, the sorceress detective Lady Abigail Irene, find themselves embroiled in a plot by Prussian invaders to conquer Russia -- the last strong holdout in a Europe that has been overrun and occupied. The couple has returned to London for the elderly Abigail Irene’s death but it is not comfort they find in this occupied city. The action begins early on when on a protective whim Sebastien follows a pair of teenage girls out late one night who are in danger of falling victim to loyal Brits who will not favor their Prussian military dress. There is something about the girls that strikes him as odd and as he reveals a few gathered clues to Abigai,l Irene and their friend Phoebe they realize that an attempt is being made by the Prussians to form a squad of werewolves that could be unleashed on the Russian front. Whether the girls (who are part of this) can be saved or must be sacrificed is a point of contention that is not solved until Sebastien meets with one of them and discovers her secret. He realizes that the adults are not the only ones with a plan, nor are they necessarily the most powerful ones in the plot to change the world.

While I enjoyed New Amsterdam immensely (and highly recommend it), Bear surprised me by making this very teen friendly sequel. Ruth and Adele, the teens Sebastien follows, carry their fair share of the story and are strong characters. Bear also does a great job of rewriting history here, with a dark version of 1938 that fits perfectly into might-have-been territory. (See Jenny Davidson’s The Explosionist or Jo Walton’s Farthing for other excellent alt-histories set in this period.) While the book will be most enjoyed by fans of Amsterdam, as it follows up on events there, new readers will find much to be excited about with Ruth and Adele as they face grave choices about loyalty to country, self and each other. It is clear that children are the new weapon of choice in this war but in a very unconventional matter. Bear provides plenty of political intrigue, some tension and enough mythic conversation to make readers long for a mystical library collection of their own. It’s nice to see Abigail and Sebastien still on the side of the good guys here, and even better to find a teenager who is bloody well tough enough to take on the true face of evil.

Alternate history detective Professor Langdon St. Ives returns in Subterranean Press’s The Ebb Tide, a steampunk adventure that includes one wicked cool submarine, a lost (and recently recovered) map, mysterious bad guys with guns and a final confrontation in Morecambe Bay “with its dangerous tides and vast quicksand pits.” St. Ives continues to be his brilliant deductive self although this time around more of the action is focused on stalwart sidekick (and faithful biographer) Jack Owlesby, who affords himself quite admirably in several dangerous situations above water and below.

Together with old friends and new, St. Ives and Owlesby are on the hunt for the suspected alien device from the Yorkshire Dales Meteor, which was lost in Morecambe Bay years before while under the care of Bill “Cuttle” Kraken who created a map of his intended route across the bay before succumbing to its treacherous tides. Just what the device is capable of no one knows but recovering it before the evil Ignacio Narbondo (otherwise known as “Frosticos”) is imperative. When the map is found, Ives is quickly on Kraken’s trail and along with Owlesby, a talented street urchin, and others who support him in his current days of banishment from the Explorers Club, the race is on to beat Frosticos. The discovery of a shipyard below the River Thames keeps things moving while introducing several of the mechanical devices that steampunk fans will enjoy. Everything leads to a confrontation with dastardly villains, one of whom gets his just deserts. All’s well that ends well (mostly) as Owlesby is victorious and the device -- whatever its origins might be -- is revealed at last.

Author James Blaylock keeps the action moving, the pithy comments flowing and the dire circumstances just this side of believable as St. Ives maneuvers his way around his arch enemy. Accompanied by J.K. Potter’s always stellar illustrations, The Ebb Tide is one of the better fantasy adventure characters I have come across in ages. Modern teens will love St. Ives but the inclusion of talented teen Finn Conrad (former circus acrobat of course) will keep them particularly riveted. There is nothing not to like about this novella and a lot to recommend it. Be sure to check out Blaylock’s other St. Ives adventures as well. (And don’t miss his afterword to the The Ebb Tide, a delightful combination of fact and fiction as the author ruminates on writing his story.)

The subtle fantasy Water Steps is a perfect blend of coming-of-age story and mythology (a la The Secret of Roan Inish). You have to stay with this one for awhile before the fantasy elements to unfold but by then readers will have become so involved in eleven-year old Kyna’s life that the big reveal is mostly just icing on the cake.

In the opening pages we learn that Kyna is terrified of water -- not just large bodies of water but everything from bathroom showers to the tub used for dunking apples at Halloween. At first this fear seems to be overkill but then author A. LaFaye reveals that Kyna’s family was killed in a boating accident from which she, as a toddler, was the sole survivor. Adopted by the couple who saved her life in the storm, she has continued to struggle with water terror ever since. As Water Steps opens, “Mem” and “Pep” surprise her by announcing they are all going to spend the summer on Lake Champlain. Just physically being that close to water is an epic trial for Kyna and all the stories she hears about “silkies” who dwell in the lake do nothing to make it more compelling. Determined to stay far from the waves she resolutely pursues her land-based Girl Scouts badges and makes friends with a younger boy who lives nearby. He wants to track silkies while Kyna hopes to photograph birds. Slowly, over time, she gets closer to the water until the day she pushes herself to be as brave as she can be and save her friend when the waves come just a little too close.

Stories about silkies abound here, and fit well into the narrative as Kyna’s adoptive parents both come from Ireland and many of their conversations with her are steeped in tales of their homeland. The longer they spend at Champlain the more Kyna begins to wonder about their past and when she meets a few of the relatives the many things she doesn’t know about her family begin to stack up. Along with her friend Tylo’s determination to sight a silkie, Kyna finds her summer full of many more questions then she planned and all the answers -- no surprise -- point toward the water. In the end the book is very much a “heartwarming summer’s tale” that should be pitch perfect for Celtic curious middle grade readers who want to identify first and foremost with their protagonist without being swept away by the plot’s more fantastic elements. It’s a gentle story that should be well received.

Finally, venerable editor Sharyn November released the latest entry in the Firebirds series of speculative fiction with Firebirds Soaring last December. As usual the list of contributors is impressive, including Carol Emshwiller, Nancy Farmer, Jo Walton, Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple, Margo Lanagan and Ellen Klages. There are many standouts to be found here and readers are going to find favorites among the eclectic collection. I found Nancy Springer’s train travel story, “A Ticket to Ride” particularly enjoyable as it combined the romance of riding the rails along with the fantastic suggestion that a particular train (and ticket) could take you to a place you never imagined. (It also starts in a library thus combing two of my lifelong favorite things.) In “A Thousand Tales,” Christopher Barzak returns to a favored setting with an Asian tale of transformation and empowerment that says more about young girls and what they must fight to accomplish then it does about sly foxes -- nicely done. Ellen Klages proves yet again that closets are mysterious places and sometimes it is more worrisome to trust friends than strangers in “Singing on a Star” and the strong pull of home and family who love you is perfectly illustrated in Louise Marley’s “Egg Magic,” a story that any teen who has felt bored by the same old thing will hopefully read with a deep appreciation.

Marly Youman’s “Power and Magic” written, she explains, “for my magic-loving teenage daughter who finds that real boys can’t compete with make-believe ones” delivers a special brand of Georgia cool and a wonderful boy who is everything those vampire boy toys will never be. (You heart will simply melt over Erl Jack.) “Little Red” from Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple is a vivid dark story of a teenager in trouble, one who can not go home and pines for survival while trying to kill herself in so many new and different ways. Red is brave and resolute while she struggles through abuse and ignorance. “We get a new therapist the next day. We’re always getting new ones. They stay a few weeks, a few months, and then they’re gone.” Red has demons on her trail but she fights them off; she fights everyone. Girl Interrupted indeed -- Yolen and Stemple give us the read deal of teen trauma with “Little Red” and it will likely leave readers trembling.

The anthology’s big treat is Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s dragon novella, “The Ghosts of Strangers” which combines more than one fantasy element (dragons and ghosts) into a tale that turns what you might expect onto its ear and shows how powerful personal courage can be. Taken together the entire book is an excellent place to discover authors you love, characters you can’t forget and fantasies few of us can imagine.

Until next month you can catch me at chasingray.com where the Summer Blog Blast Tour will be running the week of May 18th. Also check out Guyslitwire.com for new recommendations for teen boys from a group of bloggers with a wide range of interests. Awesome stuff for anyone looking for a good book.

Cool Reads: Sy Montgomery has written a lot of wonderful nature books for both children and adults. She has lately become a mainstay of the Scientist in the Field series from Houghton Mifflin Children’s and her animal loving memoir, The Good Good Pig, was a bestseller in 2007. Recently Chelsea Green has reissued some of her earlier nature titles and after reading Journey of the Pink Dolphins: An Amazon Quest and Spell of the Tiger: The Man-eaters of Sundarbans, I am now a committed Montgomery fan. What makes her standout for me is that Montgomery writes not only about the science of the animals she is investigating but also the mythology and folklore surrounding them, the people who live near them and those who study and manage them. She takes a broad view of nature, seeing the creature and its entire environment. I love the Boston Globe quote about her, that she is “part Indiana Jones and part Emily Dickinson.” If you wonder, like I did, how that is possible then you simply must read these two books.

Teens in particular should embrace Dolphins and Tiger as they carry a heavy dose of adventure from the very beginning. Just getting to the Amazon in order to study the pink dolphins is an exercise in endurance and as for the Sundarbans, the swamp and delta that lies between India and Bangladesh where the only actual man-eating tigers in the world live (and hunt), well it’s right out of a 19th century journal of intrepid woman explorers. The two books excel in stories of wildlife encounters both expected and not (rats and bugs are especially prevalent in the Amazon) but it is the many ways in which Montgomery reaches far beyond the traditional confines of nature reporting that will impress her readers. There is a wealth of fascinating information in both of these books that extends into the realm of how people live with these particular animals and further, how they live with the wild in general. Sy Montgomery is clearly someone with an innate sense of curiosity. Combined with an extraordinarily elegant writing skill (echoes of Barry Lopez) she is a nature writer who must not be missed. Mandatory reading for teens looking for their own summer adventures and especially those worried all the great discoveries have been made. Sy Montgomery is a pied piper for those bored with the same old thing; read her and find the world.

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I ventured into my office on Saturday with the intention of sorting through the piles and piles (and piles) of books that have gathered there in the past couple of months. I do this several times a year, partly to remind myself what I have down there and also to figure out where I fit books for a review. In order to keep some kind of order in the house, when books arrive I make a pretty quick "yes/no" decision. Some books I know I will never review and those go immediately into the garage for donation. The ones I know for sure I've been waiting for go downstairs and the ones that I think maybe might work, or that I'm intrigued by, or that I secretly wanted and yet never requested (Hello Paul Collins' Book of William) all go down to the office as well. Over a couple of months everything always seems to merge into one big pile of non order and then I know I have to spend an hour or two dealing with it.

Not that this is exactly torture, mind you. Two hours of sorting books is pretty much my zen happy place if you know what I mean!

Here's what I'm dealing with down the line for Bookslut:

June: Coming-of-age stories. This column is completely done.

July: Small adventures. I have five books reviewed for this column and I'm reading a sixth which I plan to include. This leaves room for another review, maybe - if I find a book that fits. Right now I would really like another book with a boy protagonist or with a minority protagonist to go in here. That was part of what I was looking for on Saturday but I'm still not sure. I also have to choose my "Cool Read" but I have a picture book idea for that.

August: Road trips. Right now I have three books planned for sure for this column - one of which is a nonfiction which delights me to no end. (The others split nicely into a boy book and girl book.) I obviously need more books here. I have one I requested from S&S that is due out this month (You Are Here by Jennifer E. Smith) and that would work with the theme but I don't have it yet. I have a few other possibilities - books that don't directly involve car trips but do involve travel and I might just broaden the theme so I can include them. (Two boats and a plane!) Not much reading done for this column yet though.

September: Fly me to the Moon. This is the Apollo 11 anniversary column, or all thing moonish. I know the actual anniversary is in July but I like doing fiction for summer reading and also I figure lots of kids will be talking about this when they go back to school in science class. (At least I hope they will - who knows.) I have four books for the column already including Tonya Lee Stone's fabulous Almost Astronauts. There's one book I'm waiting on from S&S: T-Minus, a graphic novel by Jim Ottaviani. I requested it, so it should arrive. I'm a big fan of Jim's work and really looking forward to what he does here. This column then, though largely unread, is already plotted.

October: Bradbury Weather. I have been doing an "October Country" column for this month in the past, but there aren't a lot of creepy/scary books out that I'm really interested in. (Call it vamp burnout.) So I thought I'd just broaden it to more of a Bradburyish type theme this year. Sideshow will fit nicely in here as would Liz Hand's upcoming YA title Wonderwall which I'm quite excited about. Holly Black also has book 2 of her Good Neighbors series due out this fall and the first graphic novel surprised me very much (loved the snark) so that is three titles thus far. More to come I'm sure.

November: Right now I have no theme for November although I'm leaning in two directions; one would be a "school dazed" type theme of books about coping with school pressures or set primarily in school with school issues, the second would be more a cool books for English Class which I've done in the past and would include a new YA Hemingway biography from Catherine Reef, Lady Macbeth's Daughter from the always fabulous Lisa Klein (loved her remake of Hamlet, Ophelia) and a Hamlet remake from John Marsden that just arrived here the other day with a note inside from Chris Crutcher stating "John Marsden has done what a legion of educators, my parents, a great number of more literate friends and my read-anything-you-can-get-your-hands-on grandmother failed to do. He has made me, for one glorious moment, love Shakespeare."

As someone who pretty much loathes Shakespeare (blame high school Brit Lit for that one) Crutcher's note made me pause long and hard and then put this book on the downstairs pile as opposed to right into donate. (And believe me, that is where it was going.) So brilliant marketing ploy on the part of Candlewick and a book that would fit perfectly into that English Class plan, if that is where I'm going. The Collins book on the Shakespeare portfolios, although published for adults, could also fit here if it reads as something high school teens would like. (And based on his other books, I bet it will.)

December is also up in the air so I could just make November "English Class" and December "School Dazed" and then move into January with "good winter reads". I'm really not sure. I generally try to make December a fun reading month - recommending several books that have nothing in common other than the fact that I enjoy them because I figure people are looking for that during that month. (So December could be "good reads" and January cold be "School Dazed" - am I really plotting a column for January 2010?????) It's hard to figure exactly what I want to do and much of this relies on what I have and what I receive. Right now the columns through September are pretty much set in stone, theme-wise (heck June, July and September are largely done as far as what specific titles will be reviewed in them). But then I see a book like Claire Zulkey's An Off Year, about Cecily who has always done the right thing and then shows up to college and decides not to go - setting off an unexpected gap year "during which Cecily must ask herself, for the first time, what does she really want to do with her life?" and I think, well, that could be a good book and I'd like to see how Zulkey handles that whole gap year idea. But where do you fit that book exactly? ("School Dazed" I suppose - but it depends on how the other books fit in there as well.)

So you can see why I go downstairs and spend a few hours sorting and thinking and reconsidering just what should go where.

On top of all this I'm still juggling broader groups over at Eclectica, where each quarter I have group reviews of biographies or poetry or history. In the current issue I have Biographies and Books About the Great Outdoors (with Jason Chin's fabulous Redwoods and a new Jane Yolen poetry title) and this summer I will have a picture books round-up and probably some "you don't know you're learning when you read these books" round-up. Maybe art titles too. I was putting together a historical picture books round-up and then realized that I have a bunch of Revolutionary War books on hand and several others on the way in the coming months, so I think October's issue will have a "Say You Want a Revolution, Mr. Adams" round-up. These reviews grow organically almost with me reviewing books continuously until I see that I have enough to submit as a unique group. A theme always emerges on its own which is very cool and low key at the same time. It's part of why I love writing for Eclectica (and I think why readers enjoy these collective reviews so much.)

So....that was my Saturday, or at least part of it. Several books went back upstairs to the donate bags as I realized that I was not going to get to them. Sometimes I will sit on a book for more than a year until I can figure out where it fits (Tamar was this way, as was Chameleon by Charles R Smith which is in my June column), but that is sort of rare. I tend to be ruthless just because I have to be - there are always more books showing up at my door. (If I really like a book then it will go somewhere, eventually - I guarantee that.) But still, however odd and subjective the system might be it does eventually work. One of the car books for August is over a year old and several of the fantasies in my May column are six months or so. I'm not really worried about release date but group cohesion. What's interesting is that when a book shows up I often have no idea how it will fit, until the next time I go downstairs, analyze the pile and then suddenly - it all works.

And I get to see my floor again too!

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Orion magazine had a short and yet staggering piece last month on the unexploded shells in France leftover from the Battle of Verdun - the WWI Battle of Verdun. Here's a bit:

British, French, American, and German armies fired approximately 720 million shells and mortar bombs on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918. Military experts estimate that as many as one in five rounds of ammunition fired by either side failed to explode. As a direct result of land contamination by unexploded ordinance, 16 million acres of France were cordoned o= at the end of 1918, including the 2 million acres around Verdun. Known as the Zone Rouge, they remain forbidden territory to this day. The Département du Déminage was created after the end of the Second World War to find, remove, and destroy shells and bombs from both wars. This activity has cost the department 630 démineurs to date, all killed while clearing unexploded munitions. At the current rate of clearance it is a conservative estimate that the Département du Déminage will still be finding these weapons nine hundred years from now.

The brave men who clear these shells (the "demineurs") have a job largely overlooked by the public - certainly by those outside of France who likely have no clue that the First World War is still so much with us. I strongly urge you to read this piece, it will only take a few minutes and the ending is one of the more eloquent and shocking things I have read in a long time. It quite took my breath away.

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I haven't read the April issue of Locus but there are a few bits from the Ekaterina Sedia interview online. Here's one that made me think of Jenny Davidson's The Explosionist:

“I don't sit down and try to work out my fantasies as though they were SF. I do think there's a definite overlap, but scientifically I'm not averse to saying, 'We've reached the limit of scientific understanding -- magic.' When you have the gargoyles in The Alchemy of Stone, science stopped working long before this thing started!

“People say, 'There should be rules to magic.' Why? It's magic. I understand you shouldn't be able to do anything you want, necessarily, but it shouldn't be like the laws of physics laid on magic. I'm much more interested in surreal kinds of things, where you don't know how things work but you don't care. It's like the Celestial Cow in The Secret History of Moscow -- she has no rules; she's a cow.”

She also talks a bit about the book she is working on right now which sounds amazing:

“The book I'm working on now, The House of Discarded Dreams, is mostly based on urban legends, but there's also some other strange stuff going on. This girl's parents are Zimbabwean immigrants, and she has problems with her mother, who is politically aware and insistent on her daughter following the same road and having the same beliefs. It's urban fantasy, but it's more Atlantic City/New Jersey/horseshoe crabs (though the urban legends are mostly Zimbabwean). There's a Zimbabwean writer, Dambudzo Marechera, who wrote about this entity known as Man-Fish -- it's a fish that swallows the soul of a drowning person, and becomes a fish with the soul of a person inside of them. I read this book and thought, 'Oh my god, this is so awesome! But I'm not going to steal somebody else's ideas.' Then I found out the Man-Fish was actually an urban legend. Score! I am so going for it!”

I have to be honest - she pretty much ad me at "horseshoe crabs". They are all over the place in the river I grew up on; we actually have the shell of one here in the house that we brought back a few years ago. They are fascinating creatures more taken advantage of then appreciated.

I loved The Secret History of Moscow - still need to read Sedia's most recent book but I'm pretty much onboard with anything she writes.

In other news I was a reviewing machine today, finally getting Ghost Town, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate and The Entomological Tales of Augustus Percival: Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone all reviewed for July. (When I'm done with this post I'll get to Nothing But Ghosts.) One of the things that happens when you review YA and MG books is that you read them fast - and thus they get stacked up before you get the reviews done. This isn't a big thing but when you turn around and see a stack of books sitting there, you realize that writing needs to happen before any more reading does. It's nice to be this far ahead again though; I hate when I'm crunching on a column days before it is due.

Just finished Flygirl by Sherri Smith (also for July); It's wonderful; can't say enough good things about that one. (And whoa - what an awesome cover!)

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I have lately found myself gravitating toward a set of obsessions reading-wise. It's not that we all don't do this to some degree (if you like cozy mysteries then you read a lot of cozy mysteries) but a pattern is forming of late that is, in retrospect, rather interesting. Here's what I'm way into lately:

1. Intrepid lady explorers/scientists. These are usually ladies of the 19th and early 20th century who set out for various destinations for the purposes of learning either about people, places or some scientific purposes (paleontology, archeology, etc.). This group includes famous women like Karen Blixen but also woman that a lot of people may not have heard of like Dorothea Bates, Mary Anning, Ella Maillart and Charmian Kittredge (otherwise known as Mrs. Jack London). I never heard about any of these women when I was in school - not even in college. (Betsy Ross and her fictional flag, yes; Freya Stark in the Middle East, no. Sigh.) What's interesting is that beyond the obvious nonfiction that this obsession leads me to (like the upcoming title The Fossil Hunter on Anning that I mentioned yesterday), there's also a good deal of fiction I read about them. In fact, it was because of the intrepid lady angle that I was first attracted to both The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate and Petronella Saves the Day. Both are clearly "adventurers in training" (Petronella actually has a rather big adventure in her book which looks to be the first in a series - I hope) and I was interested to see how a writer creates an "intrepid young woman". Both are great - both will be in the July column. (June is coming-of-age, July is "choose your own adventure", August is "road trips" and September looks to be "fly me to the moon" - in honor of the anniversary, of course.)

What intrigues me about the real women is not what they did once they got wherever they were going (of after they made their discovery like Anning or Bates) but what prompted them to go look for something in the first place. You grow up in a time and place that does not encourage big moments of bravery (or craziness) so why do these particular women go? Some of them went alone, a few with men (that was the case with Blixen and Johnson) but even that is surprising. What makes a woman choose a man who will take her far far away for questionable reasons (as in adventure)? I mean I get the romantic appeal of the wild boy and all that but let's be real - crushing is one thing, marrying the guy and leaving home with him is a whole other deal. It's a puzzle and I know there is a different answer for every woman and that might be part of the appeal of this subject for me. All of them did something extraordinary for their own reasons - and all of them are collectively extraordinary. I love trying to figure out why or sometimes, just thinking about why.

Ever heard of Margaret Fountaine? I hadn't until just recently. She's awesome. I totally need to get my hands on the book on her life.

[Post pic of Osa Johnson. Her book "I Married Adventure" was the first book about an adventurous lady I read. I found it in a used bookstore in my hometown about ten years ago - it has an zebra patterned cover so it stood out on the shelf. I actually passed it by at first (because I never heard of her) but went back and bought it a day later. The bottom pic is her and husband Martin - he was killed in an airplane crash. Aren't they beautiful?]

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I have a ton of notes lying around about books coming out this fall. Here's the rundown of several that jumped out at me for a variety of personal or bloggable reasons. (Meaning I want them for myself or I wanted to let you all know.) Some aren't online yet, but if you're interested in them at least now you can keep your eyes peeled.

Mathilda Savitch by Victor Lodarto (September from FSG): "Fear doesn’t come naturally to Mathilda Savitch. She prefers to look right at the things nobody else can bring themselves to mention: for example, the fact that her beloved older sister is dead, pushed in front of a train by a man who is still on the loose. But after a year of spying and provocations, she’s no closer to the truth than she was the day it happened. When Mathilda finally cracks Helen’s e-mail password, a secret life opens up, one that swiftly draws her into a world of clouded motives and strange emotion. Somewhere in it lies the key to waking her family up from their dream of grief. To cross into that underworld and see what her sister saw, she has to risk everything that matters to her."

I see major teen crossover potential with this one as the protagonist is only thirteen. We'll see how it turns out - I'm hoping it leans heavily on the mystery and doesn't get bogged in trying to prove its quirkiness. It's coming my way so I'll keep you posted on how it reads.

The Fossil Hunter by Shelley Emling (October Palgrave): "In 1811, when she was only twelve years old, Mary Anning discovered the first dinosaur skeleton—of an ichthyosaur—while fossil hunting on the cliffs of Lyme Regis, England. Mary, the child of a poor family, became a fossil hunter, selling her discoveries and attracting the attention of collectors and eventually of the scientific world. Until Mary’s discovery, it was widely believed that animals did not become extinct. But the bizarre nature of the creatures that Mary found made it impossible to ignore the truth, sparking the conversation about evolution carried on by scientists from Charles Darwin to Stephen Jay Gould."

Mary Anning has a fascinating story and I'm very pleased to see this book. She was collecting fossils as a child and supported her family with her discoveries. Another example of a woman ahead of her time who has been hugely overlooked by modern historians. (Have any of you ever heard of her in earth science class when studying dinosaurs? I sure didn't and I'd love to reach back to my 8th grade teacher and demand to know why!)

Rewilding the World by Caroline Fraser: (Henry Holt December) From Fraser's web site: "In the spirit of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which launched the modern environmental movement with its clarion call to stop the chemical onslaught against birds and wildlife, Rewilding the World, based on more than­ five years of travel, reporting, and research, documents the current global crisis of biodiversity loss and measures the profound cost of losing our ancient connections to the realm of the wild. But while the book offers an unsparing portrait of the toll of destruction and the failure of mainstream conservation groups to reverse the tide, it's also a story of breath throughs in genetics and conservation biology, of visionary heroes, and of hope. It is the first authoritative, narrative account of the rewilding crusade that has transformed conservation efforts and raised the environmental stakes on every continent, from Yellowstone to Africa to the jungles of Asia a­nd Latin America."

This is a subject that concerns me all the time - partly from growing up in FL where so much of the landscape has been altered for no good reason (and I mean that - abandoned shopping malls abound down there) and partly from living in AK where the belief that wilderness is limitless is still clung to by many. (Many people I personally know as a matter of fact.) I'm interested to see what has been going on in the field and who is doing the work.

The Heart of the Great Alone by David Hempleman-Adams (Bloomsbury October): "Among the greatest achievements in the history of photography, those of the early polar explorers surely stand out, for the beauty of their images and the almost impossible conditions they encountered. And none of these are more remarkable than the photographs recorded by the official chroniclers of two epic Antarctic expeditions—that of Robert Falcon Scott, departed in 1910, which tragically resulted in his death; and, four years later, that of Ernest Shackleton, whose heroic sea journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia has become the stuff of legend.

Their photographers—Herbert George Ponting and Frank Hurley—transported bulky cameras and glass plate negatives across the forbidding polar landscape to record some of the earliest images of this dramatic environment. That the photographs survived to be presented on their return to King George V is miraculous, and they have remained ever since in the Royal Collection. The Heart of the Great Alone reproduces the best of these marvelous images, some of which have never appeared in book form before—ships encased in ice floes, ice cliffs and ravines, campsites and dog sleds, and the incomparable beauty of Antarctic flora and fauna. Together they form an invaluable record of an environment that global warming has forever changed. With a superb narrative drawing on Ponting’s and Hurley’s writings and other unique archival material from the Royal Collection, and with extended captions for each image, this book is a unique addition to the literature of polar exploration."

I can't imagine why I even have to explain why I want this. Please - you all know me. It's a given.

Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith (Penguin November). "Split into four sections—“Reading,” “Being,” “Seeing,” and “Feeling”—Changing My Mind invites readers to witness the world from Zadie Smith’s unique vantage. Smith casts her acute eye over material both personal and cultural, with wonderfully engaging essays—some published here for the first time—on diverse topics including literature, movies, going to the Oscars, British comedy, family, feminism, Obama, Katharine Hepburn, and Anna Magnani. In her investigations Smith also reveals much of herself. Her literary criticism shares the wealth of her experiences as a reader and exposes the tremendous influence diverse writers—E. M. Forster, Zora Neale Hurston, George Eliot, and others—have had on her writing life and her self-understanding."

I'm not a huge Smith fan but anyone interested in writer porn of the literary kind is going to want to give this one a look. The fact that she gives Hurston some attention certainly makes me happy though.

Strange Maps by Frank Jacobs - from the Strange Maps web site. (Studio/Penguin October): "An intriguing collection of more than one hundred out-of-the-ordinary maps, blending art, history, and pop culture for a unique atlas of humanity."

This is brain candy for anyone interested in development, urbanism, history, etc. The site is a lot of fun and always informative - the book looks gorgeous.

The Kingdom of Ohio by Matthew Fleming (Putnam September): "After discovering an old photograph, an elderly antiques dealer living in present-day Los Angeles is forced to revisit the history he has struggled to deny. The photograph depicts a man and a woman. The man is Peter Force, a young frontier adventurer who comes to New
York City in 1901 and quickly lands a job digging the first subway tunnels beneath the metropolis. The woman is Cheri-Anne Toledo, a beautiful mathematical prodigy whose memories appear to come from another world. They meet seemingly by chance, and initially Peter dismisses her as crazy. But as they are drawn into a tangle of overlapping intrigues, Peter must reexamine Cheri-Anne’s fantastic story. Could it be that she is telling the truth and that she has stumbled onto the most dangerous secret imaginable: the key to traveling through time?"

It features cameos from Edison and Tesla and sounds like fun. I like a fun novel sometimes and this will have to be my Tesla fix (damn you Samantha Hunt for making him so appealing!) I also love that it is in old NYC and the turn of the last century (a favorite place and time for me). Here's hoping it's as good as promised....

Wonderwall by Elizabeth Hand (Penguin YR October) Hand goes YA - who would have thought it after reading the incredible grittiness of Generation Loss (still can't forget that book). From the catalog: "Seventeen-year-old Meredith lives for her art—but after her girlfriend Lindsey commits suicide, even that can’t save her. Desperate, Mer abandons art school and makes her way home to Washington, D.C., intending to kill herself. A chance street encounter leads her to a lockhouse by the river, which leads her to craft something remarkable—a wall painting that is a doorway through art and time. Through it comes the young Arthur Rimbaud, the “child poet,” who is equally desperate. The two artists—one visual, one verbal—change each other’s lives."

Arthur Rimbaud in a YA title? My God - it's like the apocalypse or something. No vamps, no werewolves, no deep soulful looks. No mean cheerleaders. No....well, you get the idea. I'm planning to review this one for my October column and really looking forward to it. Hand is probably one of my favorite authors, not because I automatically love everything she writes, but because she pushes me with everything she writes. She makes me think - both as a writer and a reader. I'm delighted to see her writing a book for teens.

Whew - lots of books to look forward to! (And I didn't even mention DK's two LEGO titles - Lego Star Wars and The Lego Book. Somebody in my house will be finding both of those under the Christmas tree, I guarantee it.)

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I have reading and enjoying immensely Scott Weidensaul's Of a Feather: A Brief History of American Birding (the year of unrelenting bird books continues...). If you are interested in general history at all then you will love this book. He profiles all sorts of fascinating Americans who obviously have a love of birds in common but more broadly are just a very eccentric and interesting group to boot. I was especially intrigued by the mention of Martha Maxwell, the first woman field naturalist who "obtained and prepared her own subjects" (According to a current exhibition on her work at the National Cowboy Museum). As she did her work in the mid 19th century I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that she likely was not the first ever but rather the first to receive any sort of popular notice or acclaim. Her taxidermy is what really puts her above pretty much all others working in the field at the time. Martha was the first person ever - and this seems assured - to build dioramas with taxidermy and show the animals as they appeared in the wild. Every time you visit a natural history museum and see creatures in a naturalized setting doing what they would do in the wild, it is because Martha showed how effective such presentations could be.

Of course her life was hard. (Of course, of course.) From all accounts her husband seems to have been little more than a drag upon her. (Weidensaul can't understand why on earth she seems to have married him in the first place let alone stayed with him.) She tried more than once to attend college, even after she became famous, but never had the money for tuition to stay for long. In the end she died under "difficult circumstance" of ovarian cancer. To add insult to injury her animals ended up being sold to a man of poor character who apparently sold some off piecemeal while the rest were poorly stored and destroyed by the elements. The woman who had such a great impact on what we see in museums does not have her work in any of them.

There is one book written about Martha which came out ten years ago. In all my reading on women in the field (explorers, adventurers, etc.), I've never heard of her. I suppose part of the problem is that she created large things that were lost - and seems not to have left a written record of her work, or life. (Although Weidensaul notes that a sister did write a book about her at the height of her fame.) Oddly enough (or maybe not) she was a vegetarian. As a woman of her times, I think she was a startlingly original artist. It's amazing how quickly all evidence of your life can vanish from the face of the earth, isn't it? Like you were never there - and never created anything at all.

[Post pic of Martha Maxwell courtesy Nat. Cowboy Museum. You can see stenographs of her amazing display at the 1876 Centennial Expo here. The post title is taken from that mammoth taxidermy display there - which she cheekily titled "Women's Work".]

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Okay, here are some new titles that caught my eye:

A Pearl in the Storm by Tori Murden McClure. From Booklist: "McClure details her attempts to become the first woman to row across the Atlantic, interspersed with reflections on challenges she has faced in the past. She recounts her struggles to protect her developmentally disabled brother, Lamar, from abuse by neighborhood children; her time at Harvard’s divinity school; and her work with the homeless, all the while describing her battles through towering waves and fierce storms."

I'm a sucker for "woman against the odds" type stories especially when the involve tiny ships in the middle of the sea. Plus she meets Muhammad Ali.

Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen. I'm not a huge Dessen fan (I think she's fine but I also think she gets plenty of press without my column), but her new one sounds especially good. From Booklist:

Auden is about to start college in the fall, and decides to escape her control-freak professor mom to spend the summer with her novelist father, his new young wife, and their brand-new baby daughter, Thisbe. Over the course of the summer, Auden tackles many new projects: learning to ride a bike, making real connections with peers, facing the emotional fallout of her parents’ divorce, distancing herself from her mother, and falling in love with Eli, a fellow insomniac bicyclist recovering from his own traumas. The cover may mislead readers, as despite the body language of the girl in pink and the hunky blue-jeaned boy balanced on a bike, this is no slight romance: there’s real substance here.

It's the "insomniac bicyclist" bit that really appeals to me but man - I do wish just once that covers for teen girls did not have to be so blatantly romantic sometimes.

Four Freedoms by John Crowley. A starred review from Booklist:

Although nominally about life at an American aircraft factory during World War II, Crowley’s complex and subtle novel is much grander. He explores the minds and hearts of people compelled by history to radically change their lives. Unaccountably optimistic Prosper Olander, orphaned as a child and crippled by a failed surgery, discovers that even he can find important work at a distant aircraft company in rural Oklahoma. Connie Wrobleski, frightened of nearly everything except her infant son, also travels to Oklahoma to reunite with her domineering husband, only to see him desert his family by enlisting. Prosper, Connie, and half a dozen other characters are developed in intricate detail and used as lenses on the massive relocation, dislocation, and societal change caused by the war. Crowley’s characters offer depth, nuance, and pathos to the traditional image of Rosie the Riveter. Four Freedoms is also a triumph of both research and imagination.

An airplane factory during WWII? I must read this one.

The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman. I'm hot and cold on Hoffman - but Donna gave this one a starred review in Booklist and the Little Women comparison makes it sound very appealing:

The Story sisters, Elv, Meg, and Claire, are dark-haired beauties clustered in the attic of their old Long Island house, while their lonely mother broods below. Their all-female household, a sly variation on Little Women, is under a grim fairy-tale spell, and not even sojourns with their fairy-godmother-like grandmother in Paris can protect them. As always in Hoffman’s glimmering universe, nature is an awesome presence reflected in the mercurial human heart, and consequently, the Story girls are preternaturally sensitive to storms, ghosts, and plant and animal spirits. Meg is practical, while Elv and Claire share a tragic secret, and Elv channels her anguish into elaborate, demon-haunted tales of an imaginary parallel world until she discovers more effective means of self-punishment. The always dazzling Hoffman has outdone herself in this bewitching weave of psychologically astute fantasy and shattering realism, encompassing rape, drug addiction, disease, and fatal accidents.

Big Fish by Richard Ellis. When it comes to the world's oceans and what lives within them, Ellis is THE author of choice. I haven't heard much about this book which surprises me as as it is so freaking timely. From Abrams Books:

From Richard Ellis, America's foremost painter and chronicler of undersea life, comes Big Fish, a natural history of the largest fish on Earth. Blending art and science with historical, cultural, and personal stories, Ellis illustrates the giants of the sea, incorporating anecdotes, archival images, and photos related to legendary catches and discoveries. Along the way, we meet big-game fishermen like Ernest Hemingway and Zane Grey, as well as naturalists and explorers. We also meet all manner of tuna, from bluefin and yellowfin to albacore and bigeye; billfish, from marlins to the mighty swordfish; and sharks, from the long-extinct Megamouth to the very much extant great white.

He also has a book on polar bears due out this fall. (I really have no excuse for my literary laziness - check his output and then ask yourself what you did this morning.)

In other news, I am currently reading six books at the same time (I have no idea how this happened but I'm unwilling to pause even one of them); just finished the rewrites on my "little girl" chapter and back to rewriting the final chapter of Geographies ("Flying Over the Wild"); just reviewed a rather dull book for Booklist that should have been much better but I think the author went for the easy write rather than the thorough one (not a bad book but not a good one either); turned in my May column on Friday and now working on two reviews for June so I can finish that one way way way ahead of time (yea!); bought new running shoes that really want to run! Fabulous! (Started running again last week - nothing impressive but so happy to be back out there) and...drum roll please....I CLEANED OUT MY CLOTHES CLOSET!!!

Okay, that is not even remotely literary related (other than the 20 books I found lurking in there) but it's my big happy news of the weekend. I have three bags of "clothes I will never wear and no longer wish to have staring at me" ready to be donated this week. I feel quite virtuous right now. Maybe I'll tackle my office next. (Now that would be something.....)

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I'm finally feeling like I have my head back on straight after my vacation. Two weeks doesn't seem like that long but things do have a habit of piling up, and there has been paper from one end of my dining room table to the other since we got back. Now I just have my "cool reads" for May to write up tomorrow (the two Sy Montgomery nature titles) and I will be back ahead of things. (June's column is already almost completely written and July's is half read.) Still a few things I want to mention here from various magazines and catalogs but that will wait for next week and make for some fun reading (hopefully) for all of you.

I have a phone call into my agent just to touch base and see how things are looking. I was feeling depressed a bit about the whole publishing thing the other day until I got an email from a writer friend letting me know about a friend of hers who waited for THREE years for her agent to sell her book. This wouldn't be such a big deal to me except I am reading that exact book right now (my friend did not know this) and I love it and it will be in my July column. So there you go, perspective was yet again obtained on the writing front.

I did write an unexpected additional chapter in the AK flying novel in the past two weeks. (Just an aside on that book - I have come up with a title that I finally like: "Geographies of Northern Flight". I realize that my working title is relatively meaningless in the grand scheme of things but I have loathed "Flying Cold" from the very beginning and wanted to come up with something that I could live with and worked for this book while linking it a bit to "Map of My Dead Pilots". This has the same cartography type angle and more importantly illustrates the physical and inner geography of the pilots that the narrative explores. It might change - you all might hate it - but lordy, am I happy to have it.)

So, anyway. I have been just working on the end which is basically a look at wilderness and the conflict between the idea of that and the reality of wanting to get your butt saved from the boonies when something goes wrong and also how so many Alaskans hated the whole "Into the Wild" ideal. That's the NF way it is written but it's also about the guys in the book and what they thought about wilderness and a class presentation I made with some of the pilots in grad school and how all of this pretty much converged on that spot. In the midst of working on that (which has involved a bit of stopping and starting to remind myself of what some other folks have written) I remembered, out of the blue, an accident from 1990. It was two years before I got in AK and three years before the Company for me. The only reason I knew about it was that the survivors always flew on us afterward so I used to see them and I knew their friends and family, of course. My husband was also downriver when that flight launched (out of Galena for Kaltag for folks who know this sort of thing) and the accident pilot was the only one who flew that day. The ceiling was so low (he claimed it was 500 feet) that he actually put a wing into the Yukon River. He claimed afterward that he had engine trouble and dipped it in the river because of that but the engines never showed any mechanical problem and really - everyone knew he was lying. You couldn't see the damn river and that was a fact. The plane bounced, he tried to turn around, he went into the trees and it burned. A young man on board died and so did the father of the children on board. His wife got out, he helped get their daughters out and then went back for their baby son who was lost inside. They both died. We flew the widow and children in the years that followed. My husband was one of only two pilots at the Company that they would fly with.

He never knew why they picked him; we figure because he was so well known downriver (he lived in Galena for a while working for another company) that he must have been someone they felt they could trust. Mostly I think everyone down there knew he wasn't planning to die for anybody, least of all the people he worked for. (He got that newbie shit out of the way earlier.) And so for the four years I worked at the Company we flew them, always on clear days, always back to the same place, always over the same stretch of river.

They were the only people I ever knew who survived a catastrophic crash and they were scarred - one little girl terribly so. I still remember their last name (their mother's full name in fact) and I can see them in my mind right now. I've wondered lately if I kept that story in my head because I thought I might want it one day - might want to reconsider it all again from a clearer distance. And I wonder a little bit if it is right to do that because this is their story (as vague as I make it in the book - no dates, no names, etc.) and should a writer take that away from someone? Take a moment like that and remember it from your perspective? Not the facts of the crash but the realization that the crash lives on. Maybe it's not right.

The girls would all be in their 20s now. I wonder how much of the story they still keep with them and if I'm treading on ghosts to go there one more time.

Years later there are many things about the Company I have forgotten; that happens with any job, with any place once you’ve moved on. There were so many passengers, so many pilots, so many stories. But the little girl I can see still out of the corner of my eye, as she was that first time, only nine or ten years old, still living that crash because she had to, because her face wouldn’t let her move on.

I still don’t know how any of them ever flew again.

I feel like a thief when I write about her, borrowing her story, stealing her crash, making it part of my education as much as it was her life. I wonder now if I stood at the window memorizing her thinking maybe, someday, I will understand better why she matters to me and I’ll want to remember her perfectly, I’ll want to see those sandals and that barrette again. I’ll want to see that mask ten years later just as clearly as I see it now. I want to make sure I get it right when I need to write it later.

Do all writers think that way?

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What has been occupying my reading time since I got home:

A Wish After Midnight by Zetta Elliott. I rarely have contact with authors asking me to review their books. I think Bookslut protects me a bit from this onslaught (Jessa probably gets a million emails of this nature a day) and my blog is so not obviously a kidlit or YA blog that most authors probably aren't sure if I would blog about a book here. Usually I only hear from an author if they already know me through comments/emails or if they are referred here by someone else. That is why Zetta Elliott contacted me about her self-published time travel book and and based on who sent her my way, I agreed to give the book a look. I had several motives for reading it: 1) It's a time travel book for teens with a female protagonist; 2) It has an African American teen girl protagonist; and 3) It's set in Brooklyn (both present and past) and includes a good look at how the borough has changed and what the 1863 race riots in NY were like there.

My expectations were no different for this self-published title then for one from a major pub but I was curious to see what kind of book so many of them would have passed on (it's not as if Zetta is an unpublished author after all). In the end, I thought the book was great. Genna is a great protagonist - thoroughly modern and full of a lot of angst as she navigates her family and burgeoning romance with Judah, the very cool guy her mom is not so thrilled about. Genna's anger over how her family is falling apart and how her mother is missing the point (that Genna is a good kid) is excellent and contemporary teen readers will easily identify with her. After she jumps back to 1863 the plot gets that much more intense as this modern kid learns to cope with being black during the time of slavery. The best part of the book though is that it is mostly and entirely about Brooklyn and Elliott never forgets that. Yes, there is the shock and awe of adjusting to the Civil War era but as good as that is (and the drama with Genna and Judah is awesome) but what I really loved was how many layers of Brooklyn's story are revealed here. The narrative isn't perfect but I could say that about pretty much 80% of the books that come my way. It is a mystery to me why A Wish After Midnight hasn't been picked up by a publisher. I read enough YA titles to know that this one has an audience.

Mare's War by Tanita Davis. Okay, I know Tanita. We know each other in that internet kind of way where we email each other a lot, work on joint online projects a lot, consider each other friends but have never met. Go figure. That did not keep me in any way from wanting to read her latest book however. If it didn't work for me I just would have let her know (I have done this before with other online friends) so that's the scoop on all that. As for the book, which is set in both the president and WWII era and involves two teenage girls traveling cross country with their grandmother as she regales them with the story of her WAC experience. I was excited about the WWII angle, the African American characters and also the fact that this was a cross generational tale. That was probably what appealed to me the most as it is so very rare in YA fiction but so common in teen lives. Look for my full review in the May column.

Tanita does a great job here of making Mare a believable character both as teen and elderly woman and how the granddaughters respond to her story is a great entry point for readers. I like historical fiction and Sherri Smith has a WWII novel out now, Flygirl, that I am looking forward to reading. But for my June column I wanted coming-of-age stories and I think that most of the appeal for Flygirl will be the history and maybe the adventure. (I don't think that is what they will leave the story with, but I think it is how they will get there.) Tanita has a lot of growing up in Mare's War. There is the obvious plot with Mare and her friends who rise to the occasion during the war and learn all kinds of stuff about themselves but there is also what happens with Octavia and Tali who start to see their grandmother very differently and also go through some subtle but dramatic changes on their own. (Basically there's some serious growing up going on in that car.) I enjoyed reading about all of the girls but most especially enjoyed Mare's story and meeting all of her friends back in the 40s. Tanita manages to fold a good deal of social and military history into this story without ever letting that bog down the contemporary tale of grandma and the girls. It's very informative but more importantly, very compelling. Look for my full review in the June column.

The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire by CM Mayo. This adult novel is set in Mexico during the US Civil War when that country was occupied by France and governed by a Hapsburg Emperor. It's a crazy story - I had no clue that France was in Mexico as recently as the 1860s - and Mayo does a great job of telling it from multiple povs so she covers all the thoughts and feelings (from the Austrians to Mexicans) of those involved. The even bigger story is of the Mexican toddler, son of an American mother and Mexican father whose own father had once led Mexico (and was later executed by firing squad), who is "adopted" by the Hapsburg Emperor and destined to be the "Last prince" of the title. Except his parents aren't so thrilled with how things turn out and want him back and the Emperor doesn't know beans about running a country and the Empress is losing her mind from stress (literally) and the Mexicans are having a big ass revolution against all this European crap. All in all, it has great characters, an amazing story and some very fluid and elegant writing. A beauty from start to finish. (Just keep in mind - there are a lot of names to remember!)

Journey of the Pink Dolphins and Spell of the Tiger both by Sy Montgomery. These are reissues of some class nature titles by Montgomery who is a staggering writer. First you are blown away by what she is willing to do for her story (those tigers are the only acknowledge man-eaters in the world and to see them you travel to some serious boonies), but even more than that it is what she includes in these books that truly impresses. She doesn't just write about the animal, or the environment in which it lives but also explores the mythology surrounding it, the folklore, the lives of the people who live near it in the wild and the many people who are attracted to it - either as scientists to study and save it or as tour guides or those folks who don't know why they are there, but can't seem to stay away. This is nature writing that goes above and beyond what we have been led to expect. It folds so many genres into one that the mind reels at trying to classify just what these books are. They are my cool reads for May and I can't recommend them enough. Sy Montgomery is the real deal - she truly is a combination of Emily Dickinson and Indiana Jones, just like the Boston Globe said.

[Post pic - yep, it's a real pink dolphin.]

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Yesterday was a day in which much was accomplished on the always mundane homefront but also included a review of CM Mayo's The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire which I will be submitting for the next issue of Bookslut (along with a column on SFF titles - only one more review, of Zetta Elliott's A Wish After Midnight, to be written for that).

I am reading many good books and must update on them shortly.

But last night I started watching the Frontline special on "Poisoned Waters" which focused on the Cheasapeake Bay and Puget Sound and completely lost track of pretty much everything having to do with anything other than my sudden disgust with the poultry industry. Get this - factory farmers do not own the chickens - the chickens are owned by the company (like Tyson) and the farmers simply raise the chickens according to very strict company guidelines and then the company comes and takes them away for "processing". But the chicken manure - that is owned by the farmers and they have to deal with it. Now imagine you have 500,000 chickens on your property. How big of a manure problem do you think you will have? And now imagine a line of poultry farms running down the coast of the Chesapeake Bay. Starting to see how the bay is getting so many "dead zones"? Now listen to the lame ass poultry people explain why having to abide by federal guidelines would hurt the poor farmers who are already miles past getting screwed. Now get pissed.

We buy our chicken from a local company and we already pay more than most for the pleasure of eating food from a place that isn't trying to destroy the planet. Everyone who thinks they are getting their chicken cheap, well, they are fooling themselves. A dead bay is going to be a lot more expensive than a few pennies more a pound for chicken breasts.

Off soapbox now (and I haven't even started on the storm runoff problem in Seattle).

Then my son started exhibiting symptoms of the cold from hell which mainly included him saying he could not breathe and wimpering - all night long. He does not do the stuffy nose bit well at all. It drives me crazy but you can't insist a child breathe through his mouth while trying to sleep or...what. So not much accomplished in the evening or the night (like sleep).

However, late in the day FedEx dropped off Funny Business, compiled and edited by Leonard Marcus. It's a collection of interviews with writers of funny fiction like Daniel Handler, Beverly Cleary and Daniel Pinkwater (among many other great names) and while it seems like a worthy endeavor I have no time to read the book or review it right now as I'm on other things but then I saw HIlary McKay's name and I thought, well - there's always times for Hilary McKay.

I mean, really.

Here's the bit I just loved from her interview:

Q: Has being a parent influenced your writing in some way?

A: I try not to overprotect our children. We're lucky that we live in a little village and I can let our children loose to go around by themselves. There are a lot of children here in England and I suppose in American too, who are driven around everywhere and have an adult always in the background. It's very hard to write about them, because they're so supervised. I think that's why so many people write fantasy. In the old days, you could always get rid of the parents in the first paragraph by saying they're all going camping, or to India, or something like that - as E. Nesbit did. But now children have adults peering down their necks at all times. So, it's very hard, in a realistic story to let the children do anything adventurous. I remember having Rose go up a stepladder and being told by an editor, "I'm sorry, but you can't have Rose do that, because children might copy her and fall off."

And now we know why fantasy is so popular - because otherwise we would be dealing with the meddling parents all the time! And she is right - it is true. The parents were always off somewhere in those splendid British stories. Maybe this is why the Penderwicks books have been so popular; the kids have a safe place to wreak havoc but also freedom from their parental control (mom being conveniently dead of course). The appeal of Kiki Strike is obvious - it's all breaking out late at night and exploring on your own. Hmmm, interesting. I do love the Casson family a great deal - it is 100% the childhood I think so many of us wish we had. Still loved, but completely free.

Maybe we all need to move to a small village in England or something. (Miles from a chicken farm of course.)

[Funny Business is due out in October from Candlewick.]

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One of the books I can remember checking out repeatedly from my public library when I was young was Phyllis Green's Nantucket Summer. It was a combination of coming-of-age and ghost story and had a beach setting which was always a winner for my Florida self. I can't remember the entire plot but I do recall the teen protagonist (amazon reminds me her name was "A.D.") was hired for a summer to babysit for a slightly unstable mother (I think she suffered from depression) and while on Nantucket she meets the ghost of a young man. I want to say there was some connection between the young man and the mother but I don't recall. Mostly it was the atmosphere of life at the beach which I loved and A.D.'s observations and the vast amount of freedom she enjoyed. I must have checked that book out (with this exact cover) more than a dozen times. It was one of the few actual beach reads I discovered that wasn't cheesy or more concerned with romance than story. I loved it.

The other day I pulled Sand Dollar Summer by Kimberly K. Jones off the stack (actually it is not a stack but more a big sprawling floor covering pile). This is one those non-startling, quiet but deeply memorable books that often gets overlooked during awards season or among reviewers. (It originally came out in 2006 and I received a pb copy to review last year; I don't recall reading much on it around the blogosphere at all.) Long story short, twelve-year old Lise and her little brother Freeman are happy as ducks with their single mom. (Free is five and doesn't talk but otherwise all is grand.) Lise has her summer camps all scheduled and plans for much mall visiting and movie watching with her friends when their mother is in a catastrophic car accident that leaves her facing a long recovery. Looking for a more familiar (and healing) environment, Mom packs the kids and dog up for a summer on the Maine coast where she grew up. Lise is not so into the water (cold and scary) but after much complaining she and Free start making a zillion sand castles, hanging out with a couple of local kids and enjoying the company of Michael, an old friend of their mother's who is now a local doctor. Lise also meets a local elderly resident, a Native American named Ben who shares her love of the "edge", the area near the water but safe on the shore. Ben is the one who teaches Lise about sand dollars and it is for Ben that she braves a horrible storm and nearly loses her own life.

So why did I love this book? It's hard to say - Lise is a very well written likable character. She's a bit prickly (who wouldn't rather be at rock climbing camp then sitting on a beach with water too cold to enjoy?) but also responsible enough to know that her mother is struggling to regain her strength and thus deserves some leeway. (In other words she's not a complete jerk of a kid.) I liked that although it is clear that the mother and Michael are building on a past relationship, they are not the point - nor does Jones make Lise's reaction to the relationship the story. Michael is nice, the kids like Michael and where it goes from there the reader does not know because this is about Lise adjusting to how her life has changed, as much as she might not want it to. (The car accident was the moment of change and the story is really about the family catching up to that fact.) Ben reaches beyond the cliche of wise Native American as he counsels Lise on what change means - and how transient our lives truly are. (At one point while talking about his own mother and the things she taught him he says "...one day all that may be left of us are words on maps.") Ben's house (and health) are extremely fragile and it is because of this that Lise rushes out in the storm and only while she is adrift in the waves realizes that this is the way Ben wants to live and she has to respect that - no matter what the consequences. Their friendship felt real to me, as did all the relationships (between children or adults and children) in the book.

Sand Dollar Summer is just one of those beach reads that gives you the true taste of the coast, all the crazy touristy bits of it as well as the night walks near the water, the sand castles and how the salt and sand will invade every aspect of your life there - in both good and bad ways. I suppose you could say the book is dramatic (it certainly has its moments) but for me it was Lise and Free running on the beach or wandering into town to hit the library that brought back the images of Nantucket Summer. I like seasonal reading - dark and scary in fall, warm and cozy in winter, bright and exhilarating in spring (and perhaps a bit rainy) and for summer, I want to return to the coast to lazy days of shorts and t-shirts, to popsicles and sunglasses. Sand Dollar Summer brought me to the season in a second and was a delight to read from start to stunning finish. (I also loved the cover!)

Now I just need to buy a used copy of Nantucket Summer and revel all over again in my past summers.

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The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet was not only the literary news in the current issue of Vanity Fair - there was actually quite a lot of bookish content. Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler's upcoming book The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft and Detection is excerpted. I interviewed the Hooblers a couple of years ago and they are authors of both the charming Samurai mystery series for MG readers and the wonderful inside look at the Shelleys and Lord Byron, The Monsters:Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein. (I love that they funded the research on that one from "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" winnings.)

Crimes is about the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa. PW did not like it but I like the Hooblers method of "scattered history"; it often provides a lot more context to historical events then more straightforward histories.

There is also an excerpt of David Brinkley's The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America in which we learn that TDR was a great conservationist who also liked to kill things. Go figure - the man was complex. Younger readers interested in the pres should look forward to Camping with the President by Ginger Wadsworth due this fall from Calkins Creek/Front Street. It follows the 1903 camping trip between TDR and John Muir in Yosemite National Park. (I'm assuming no big game hunting takes place in that one.) Karen Dugan did the illustrations on this one and it looks lovely (due in Sept. - more on this catalog later this week)

Steampunk is the new vampire as evidenced both by Scott Westerfield's new sp trilogy debuting this fall with Leviathan (set during WWI, "Clankers" vs "Darwins"). The man is always cutting edge when it comes to teen lit trends so readers take note. (Due from S&S in early Oct.) Also Cherie Priest has left the southern monsters behind for a bit and recently unveiled the preliminary cover for her new steampunk title, Boneshaker (which interestingly enough is blurbed by Scott Westerfield). I'm a fan of Cherie's writing anyway but how can anybody look at that lovely illustration and not feel compelled to give the story a gander? Also due in October, it's a pb original from Tor. (So cool and affordable!!)

Back to the literary wonders found in VF, the "Hot Type" page includes mention of a YA title, The Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick Burd. I've heard beans about this (from Dial due in early May) and honestly, I'm confused as to why it merits extra notice. The description, other than being about a gay teen, could be pretty much the story of a zillion coming-of-age titles and honestly, there have been many COA titles like it about gay teens as well. Tell me what you think:

It’s Dade’s last summer at home. He has a crappy job at Food World, a “boyfriend” who won’t publicly acknowledge his existence (maybe because Pablo also has a girlfriend), and parents on the verge of a divorce. College is Dade’s shining beacon of possibility, a horizon to keep him from floating away.

Then he meets the mysterious Alex Kincaid. Falling in real love finally lets Dade come out of the closet—and, ironically, ignites a ruthless passion in Pablo. But just when true happiness has set in, tragedy shatters the dreamy curtain of summer, and Dade will use every ounce of strength he’s gained to break from his past and start fresh with the future.

Does Pablo kill himself or kill Alex or try to kill Dade? Is that the big hook? (Because perish the thought that a boy could fall in love with another boy without something tragic happening...) Somebody read this and tell me about it, please. (My COA column is in June and I'm done with it so no more "finding yourself" titles for me for a little while.)(Interesting additional sidenote: my family shopped at a Food World when I was growing up but I think they are out of business now. It was not up to Albertson's level but certainly equal to Winn Dixie - and way above Pantry Pride and Piggily Wiggily...if that gives you an idea as to what our options were.)

Emily Chenowith's Hello Goodbye might very well be a lovely book but this bit of the description made me want to retch:

Heartbreaking and luminous, Hello Goodbye deftly explores a family’s struggle with love and loss, as a summer vacation becomes an occasion for awakening rather than farewell, and life inevitably blossoms in the face of death.

The mother is dying. They travel to a resort so all of her friends can say goodbye and it "becomes an occasion for awakening rather than farewell..."? I get so frustrated with books that romanticize dying. I'm sorry, in the end if it is someone you love - someone you care about - then it sucks and all the gifted novelists in the world aren't going to change that.

Just my opinion of course - but it's a pet peeve.

Yet another bird book that is awfully pretty: Birds by Jeffrey and Christine Fisher. I am beginning to think I could just write about bird books and still fill my column every single month. (Birdslut????)

VF concludes with yet another ringing endorsement of Colson Whitehead's Sag Harbor. If you're looking for a critical darling, this one seems to be it. (And really - couldn't have happened to a more deserving author.)

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I was very pleased to receive the Graywolf catalog as it has rapidly become one of my favorite publishers. I've already written at length here about Eula Biss's Notes From No Man's Land, an essay collection I'm looking forward to reading but there were several other titles that I wanted to mention as well. Here are the new releases that caught my eye:

The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation by Fanny Howe.

Through a collage of reflections on people, places, and times that have been part of her life, Howe shows the origins and requirements of “a vocation that has no name.” She finds proof of this in the lives of others Jacques Lusseyran, who, though blind, wrote about his inner vision, surviving inside a concentration camp during World War II; the Scottish nun Sara Grant and Abbé Dubois, both of whom lived extensively in India where their vocation led them; the English novelists Antonia White and Emily Brontë; and the fifth-century philosopher and poet Bharthari. With interludes referring to her own place and situation, Howe makes this book into a Progress rather than a memoir.

It sounds like the ultimate process porn (Howe is a poet) and quite a freewheeling look at the work of writers over centuries. It certainly does not sound dull, that's for sure.

Castle by J. Robert Lennon. This one earned a starred review from PW:

"Do not be fooled by the dull narrator of this latest novel from Lennon (Mailman); the author methodically baits readers with mystery and the macabre until the hook is set and then yanks it back with a vengeance. Eric Loesch returns to his hometown of Gerrysburg in upstate New York and sets out to renovate a secluded farmhouse. A strange bird, Eric is unpleasant and obviously burdened with secrets that, though unknown to the reader, seem to be known by the townsfolk. Childhood flashbacks fill in the gaps, and as the terrifying details of his past coalesce, Eric remains loathe to face the truth about some horrific events. Meanwhile, clues in the present lead Eric to understand that someone or something is out to get him, and past and present meet with violent but cathartic consequences. Lennon's work is full of misanthropes and unsettling figures of all stripes, and the promise of emotional or spiritual redemption remains elusive. Here, the surprising denouement packs a powerful and brutal punch."

Lennon also has a new collection of short shorts out: Pieces for the Left Hand. From Graywolf:

A student’s suicide note is not what it seems. A high school football rivalry turns absurd—and deadly. A much-loved cat seems to have been a different animal all along. A pair of identical twins aren’t identical at all—or even related. A man finds his own yellowed birth announcement inside a bureau bought at auction. Set in a small upstate New York town, told in a conversational style, Pieces for the Left Hand is a stream of a hundred anecdotes, none much longer than a page. At once funny, bizarre, familiar, and disturbing, these deceptively straightforward tales nevertheless shock and amaze through uncanny coincidence, tragic misunderstanding, strange occurrence, or sudden insight. Unposted letters, unexpected visitors, false memories—in J. Robert Lennon’s vision of America, these are the things that decide our fate. Wry and deadpan, powerful and philosophical, these addictive little tales reveal the everyday world as a strange and eerie place.

Each of these would interest me in small ways but then I read what Dan Wickett (who is a big fan of Graywolf and got me directed to them in the first place) had to say:

Graywolf has recently published a couple of J. Robert Lennon's books - a new novel, Castle, and the first US printing of Pieces for the Left Hand (story collection previously Lennon2 published in the UK). Castle was another 'can't put down' book - a man returns to his hometown and purchases a fixer upper home on a large plot of land. He then discovers there is a block of land in the middle of his that he does not own. The collection has one to two page vignettes that are complex in their seeming simplicity. Really solid.

"Solid" from Wickett is not a throwaway word and when he notes any book I prick up my ears. I don't always agree with his choices (he's a little more into experimental fiction then I am) but he never chooses anything dull. So J Robert Lennon is certainly someone to give a look (Castle in particular sounds like a great thriller).

After looking over the frontlist titles (which include a lot of poetry if you are interested) I browsed through the backlist and came up with several titles to note:

Graveyard of the Atlantic by Alyson Hagy. (Love that title.) It's a short story collection - here's a bit of the NYTBR review:

“The stories set here will little resemble the airbrushed Outer Banks of Coppertone vacations, peppermint-stick lighthouses and legends of Blackbeard. Stripped of its beach cottages and sentiment, this is America’s breakwater—a fractured comma of sand and cordgrass, its shoals a boneyard for ships that confuse this place with sanctuary.”

Very pretty and having grown up on the insanity that is the coast, I'm mightily interested.

Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles by Kate Braverman. From the pub:

"Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles" chronicles the trajectory of Braverman's Left Coast generation with a voice of singular power. She was an antiwar activist in Berkeley, a punk-rock poet on Sunset Strip, a single mother in the East L.A. barrio, and a woman in recovery at AA meetings in Beverly Hills. By 1990 she was married and settled into a life of writing and teaching. In her forties, Braverman did the unthinkable and moved from Beverly Hills to New York's Allegheny Mountains to a 150-year-old farmhouse. In wide-ranging transmissions, Braverman deftly contrasts the social histories of Los Angeles with her new, timeless rural community; describes the effects of the changing seasons on her Californian, sun-drenched soul; and marvels at how a remote farmhouse can offer surprising consolations. "Library Journal" calls Braverman a "literary genius"; "Rolling Stone" describes her as having the "power and intensity you don't see much outside of rock and roll."

You pretty much had me at the Rolling Stone quote but it does sound like interesting social history wrapped up in a memoir. I'm a sucker for other people's lives (endlessly curious) so this one is hard to resist.

Neck Deep and Other Predicaments by Ander Monson. This one sounds quirky but should be worth a look:

In this sparkling nonfiction debut, Ander Monson uses unexpectedly nonliterary forms — the index, the Harvard Outline, the mathematical proof — to delve into an equally surprising mix of obsessions: disc golf, the history of mining in northern Michigan, car washes, topology, and more. He reflects on his outsider experience at an exclusive Detroit-area boarding school in the form of a criminal history and invents a new form as he meditates on snow.

Kirkus did not like it, PW did. That sort of thing always amuses me - it depends so much on the reviewer (as I know all too well). If you've got someone who prefers a conventional format then this book would be sunk.

A Postcard Memoir by Lawrence Sutin. This one gets me on concept alone:

Drawing upon his collection of quirky antique postcards, Lawrence Sutin has penned a series of brief but intense reminiscences of his "ordinary" life. In the process, he creates an unrepentant, wholly unique account about learning to live with a consciousness all his own. Ranging from remembered events to inner states to full-blown fantasies, Sutin is at turns playful and somber, rhapsodic and mundane, funny and full of pathos. Here you'll find tales about science teachers and other horrors of adolescence, life in a comedy troupe, stepfathering--each illustrated with the postcard that triggered Sutin's muse--and presented in a mix so enticingly wayward as to prove that at least some of it really happened.

And finally, Native American Fiction: A User's Manual by David Treuer. This whole genre is a minefield but Treuer knows what he is writing about. (BE sure to check out his essay on people masquerading as Native American authors that ran in Slate last year.) Here's what he is trying to do with this book:

This book has been written with the narrow conviction that if Native American literature is worth thinking about at all, it is worth thinking about as literature. The vast majority of thought that has been poured out onto Native American literature has puddled, for the most part, on how the texts are positioned in relation to history or culture.

Rather than create a comprehensive cultural and historical genealogy for Native American literature, David Treuer investigates a selection of the most important Native American novels and, with a novelist's eye and a critic's mind, examines the intricate process of understanding literature on its own terms.

Native American Fiction: A User's Manual is speculative, witty, engaging, and written for the inquisitive reader. These essays—on Sherman Alexie, Forrest Carter, James Fenimore Cooper, Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko, and James Welch—are rallying cries for the need to read literature as literature and, ultimately, reassert the importance and primacy of the word.

Treuer is at work on a book about modern reservation life, funded by a Guggenheim award.

Still have other topics to write about (like a lot of wonderful YA reading I've been doing and a great historical novel from Unbridled, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire plus my idea of books that every library should have) and upcoming news on Guys Lit Wire and the Summer Blog Blast Tour). In other words, it won't be quiet around here anytime soon, promise!

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I must be the only person on the planet who missed hearing about Reif Larson's upcoming (due May 5th) novel The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet. The current issue of Vanity Fair has a piece on Larsen (not online) and the six figure advance he got for the book which is described by the publisher thusly:

When twelve-year-old genius cartographer T.S. Spivet receives an unexpected phone call from the Smithsonian announcing he has won the prestigious Baird Award, life as normal — if you consider mapping family dinner table conversation normal — is interrupted and a wild cross-country adventure begins, taking T.S. from his family ranch just north of Divide, Montana, to the museum's hallowed halls.

T.S. sets out alone, leaving before dawn with a plan to hop a freight train and hobo east. Once aboard, his adventures step into high gear and he meticulously maps, charts, and illustrates his exploits, documenting mythical wormholes in the Midwest, the urban phenomenon of "rims," and the pleasures of McDonald's, among other things. We come to see the world through T.S.'s eyes and in his thorough investigation of the outside world he also reveals himself.

As he travels away from the ranch and his family, we learn how the journey also brings him closer to home. A secret family history found within his luggage tells the story of T.S.'s ancestors and their long-ago passage west, offering profound insight into the family he left behind and his role within it. As T.S. reads, he discovers the sometimes shadowy boundary between fact and fiction and realizes that, for all his analytical rigor, the world around him is a mystery.

All that he has learned is tested when he arrives at the capital to claim his prize and is welcomed into science's inner circle. For all its shine, fame seems more highly valued than ideas in this new world and friends are hard to find.

It's an illustrated novel, with Larsen including bits of T.S.'s maps throughout. Not all the reviews are glowing - some folks don't seem to know what to make of it or if they are "getting it" but you see that kind of thing whenever anyone does something new. I love illustrated novels (Barbara Hodgson is a master at this form) and the whole idea here of a child fascinated with maps is widely appealing to me. (Stephen King apparently loved it which makes me that me that much more excited.)

I am, as usual, curious as to why a book with a child protagonist is marketed to adults and not teens; I'm hoping this one has huge crossover appeal, most especially for boys (it seems that it would but I'll have to read it to be sure). What really puzzles me though is how I missed this. I hit the major literary sites basically every day but I don't recall reading about this advance or the unique nature of the book. (Megan McCain's advance I did read about and honestly I'm quite happy for her - the girl has been working the political show circuit relentlessly and I think will do a good job writing on that subject.) How did I miss this one? It's curious as so often it seems book lovers are assailed by news of the latest and greatest - or what the marketing machines determine is the latest and greatest. Sheila recently had a post up on sort of this same subject, lamenting that the same titles appear on the bestseller and award lists while so many readers wander around wondering what to read. (Her post is aimed at YA readers but the same message applies to adults as well.)

I'm all for writing about books that everyone seems to have missed - in fact I spend a lot of time trying to review books that might have been missed or lightly noticed elsewhere - then something like T.S. Spivet comes along and I realize that even the biggest marketing departments in publishing don't always get the message out to everyone. If it wasn't in Vanity Fair this month (and if I wasn't a subscriber) then I doubt I would have heard much unless it started showing up on the blogs I read. Which brings us to another part of this "how to find books" discussion - be a faithful reader of blogs written by folks whose literary opinion you respect and you will find tons of books that otherwise would have escaped your notice (thank you Jessa, Jenny D., Ed, Dan Wickett and Gwenda - just to name a few.) Are any of them planning to review The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet? I have no idea. But in the meantime Gwenda has been all over Jedidiah Berry's The Manual of Detection and Bookslut has an interview up with him this month and so I know that is a book that I must read.

See that's how this whole not-big time-marketed book thing works; you find them through the advice of others and you find those folks who give the good advice by being patient and curious and taking the time to find your way through the lit blogosphere. And then sometimes you just get lucky through the major media (hello Vanity Fair) but that's rare for me - so rare that I don't even expect to find a book this way and that is why Spivet is a nice surprise. Otherwise though, I'm faithful to the bloggers who have led me to right words in the past. Thus far not one of them has let me down and I'm sure that will remain true in the future. (I just added Eduardo Galeano's The Book of Embraces to my Powells wish list based on Gwenda's comment Tuesday and the amazing book dedication she quoted.)

I don't need a list of overlooked books (although I'm all for making them - every bit helps); I just need the bloggers I follow to write about the books they love and I'm one happy reading camper. (Oh - and the occasional major media moment of serendipity as well!)

[Is that a killer cover for Spivet or what?]
[A review of the book from Seth Marko is here.]

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Woolfson chronicles her family’s years of raising multiple wild and captive-bred birds in this truly delightful title. As she artfully blends natural history and memoir, she channels great authors from Gerald Durrell to Bernd Heinrich. There is no small amount of droll hilarity while writing about her daughters (one believed in “full civil rights to all birds”) and observing a variety of bird behaviors. Because Woolfson has rescued several members of the Corvus genus—which includes rooks, crows, magpies, and ravens—she ruminates on the mythology of these fabled birds, comparing long-held beliefs and prejudices with her own very different experiences. In writing about family members Chicken the rook and talking magpie Spike, along with their avian cohorts (including a coterie of doves housed in the garden), Woolfson brings readers comfortably into her multispecies home, and while not anthropomorphizing the animals (a subject she does address), her deep affection for them comes through. This impressive resource has such a deep well of references (Lord Byron, Truman Capote, Rachel Carson, and numerous scientists and naturalists), it serves as the widest lens imaginable, capturing social, scientific, and cultural interaction between humans and birds. In all, a wonderful book.

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I also received four catalogs while I was gone, the biggest of which (of course) was from Scholastic. Here is what caught my eye (and pretty much none of them are up online yet which is a bummer as some of these covers are really awesome):

The Good Neighbors Bk 2: Kith by Holly Black & Ted Naifeh. The first one stood out for me as it wasn't just a "human girl finds out she is part faerie and now must save the world" type story but was also very funny and played a lot with the traditional tropes of fantasy. As in - "why doesn't anyone notice that vines are covering every building in town???" I was hooked on this from this series from the get-go and loved it more at the end of Bk 1 then the beginning - a very good sign. Perfect for fans of the vamp/faerie genre looking for something fresh. (Naifeh's illustrations are awesome.)

Imagination and Innovation: The Story of Weston Woods by John Cech. This is a big book ($50) covering the Weston Woods studio and the number of children's books that have been transformed to film through their production. I was intrigued by the names mentioned: Rosemary Wells, Margaret Mahy, Robert McCloskey, etc. When was a Mahy book made into a film? At some point I would like to lump together several books on lit crit etc. about children's books and discuss them in one piece, maybe for Eclectica. Regardless, for those interested in film history this sounds like a winner.

Ruined: A Ghost Story by Paula Morris. Set in post-Katrina NOLA, Rebecca goes to visit her voodoo-obsessed aunt (don't we all need one of those) and discovers a haunted cemetery where she meets a the ghost of a runaway slave. There is a mystery in her aunt's house which must be uncovered and Rebecca finds that her contemporaries, including the popular girls at school, might be involved. Sounds like a good one for Voices of NOLA and the cover is positively dreamy.

How to Steal a Car by Pete Hautman. "Some girls act out by drinking or doing drugs. Some girls act out by sleeping with guys. Some girls act out by starving themselves or cutting themselves. Some girls act out by being a bitch to other girls. Not Kelleigh. Kelleigh steals cars."

Sold me on this one with the catalog copy. Can't wait to see how Kelleigh comes across on the page. (This one has a blue cover.)

How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford. Beatrice is the new girl in town and hoping to meet a new best friend her first day at school. Instead she ends up sitting next to Jonah who is decidedly unpopular and the two form a "unexpected friendship". Interestingly, Standiford describes this "not romance, exactly - but it's definitely love." In the end she must help Jonah get past some family issues. I'm interested to see if the nonromance friendship sustains to the end, and how it all turns out. Oh - and this cover is pink.

Operation Yes by Sara Lewis Holmes. In the interest of full disclosure, Sara is an internet friend in that we have never met but have emailed (and she was key to the development of GLW). I have not read anything else she has written but this book jumped right out at me - partly because the cover with two plastic army men balanced in front of a chalkboard is so darn unusual. Set at a school on an air force base in NC it is the story of innovative teacher and her troubled students. Here's a bit of the catalog copy:

Bo loves the improvisation exercises: They focus his restless energies and distract him from his father's impending deployment. But Gari has more important things to worry about - like getting her mom home safe from Iraq. When Mrs. Loupe's brother goes missing in Afghanistan and Mrs Loupe herself breaks down, Gari, Bo and the rest of the class have to improvise their way through their own "great battles"....and find a way to help their teacher fight hers.

There are very few well written books about kids on the homefront of any war, let alone the two we are currently waging. Sara knows this world (as readers of her blog are aware) so she is a great author to tackle it. Looking forward to seeing this big time.

The Doom Machine by Mark Teague. Okay, this just sounds like big fun. "When a spaceship lands in nearby Dutch Woods, juvenile delinquent Jack Creedle and prim A- student Isadora Shumway form an unexpected friendship. Jack's uncle Bud, a witty amateur inventor with unschooled Einstein abilities, has built a space-travel machine, and a group of hilariously bizarre space aliens are here to steal it."

I have no idea what time the book is set in, but it sounds very funny and great to MG readers. It's illustrated and the catalog samples look very good. Other than the stereotypes for the main characters, it should be a winner - and honestly if Teague knows what he is doing with those stereotypes it will work quite well. (Just please don't let the girl be a major whiny wimp; I hate that!)

Truce by Jim Murphy. A 144 page look at the famous Christmas Eve truce on the western front in 1914. There have been books written about this for adults but not children (as far as I know). Great subject and Murphy has an excellent record of historical fiction so this should be a solid NF entry.

Tentacles by Roland Smith. Marty and Grace are 13 year old twins whose parents disappeared tracking something for a nature magazine and now they live with Uncle Wolfe who is going to New Zealand in search of the Kraken. The kids - of course - stowaway but, unfortunately, "someone on board the ship is determined to sabotage their mission"!!! Classic adventure if done well and should be fun.

Peaceful Heroes by Jonah Winter, illustrated by Sean Addy. This NF title (64 pages) looks at a pet peeve of mine, that so many heroes are warriors. We hear about how everyone in the military is a hero (which is hard to accept when at the same time we have soldiers on trial or imprisoned for crimes committed against civilians and fellow soldiers) and everyone in the Twin Towers was deemed a hero (Sherman Alexie wrote a great short story skewering that idea) but really - it shouldn't be a wear the uniform or die prominently from outside attack kind of designation. Winter looks at many peaceful heroes, from Jesus of Nazareth to Sojourner Truth to Paul Rusesabagina to establish a canon for children of brave people who did not find their heroics in combat. I love Jonah Winter's work and can't wait to see what he does here.

The other catalog I received that was much appreciated was Graywolf's spring titles. More on that tomorrow as I have much to say about past and present books from that wonderful pub.

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...when I returned home late Sunday were fifty books. Fifty. That is what showed up on my doorstep for the two weeks I was gone. The most mind blowing part is that I requested only five of them. Several of the unrequested titles have moved into the possible queue - we'll see what I can do about them. But most went right out to be donated. I'd love to know whose idea it was at S&S to send me five early reader books on the upcoming Night at the Museum sequel. Note - I only counted this bundle as one book.) Why would you spend the money to send those books out to reviewers???? Bizarre. Here's what I"m especially looking forward to reading among the new arrivals:

New Orleans City Guide 1938. This is a reprint of the WPA guide with a new introduction and published by the delightful indy publisher Garrett County Press. From their site:

In 1938, under the direction of novelist and historian Lyle Saxon, The Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration produced this delightfully detailed portrait of New Orleans. It is consistently hailed as one of the best books produced about the city. Photographers, historians and writers inspired by a new spirit to find what was true and important about America amid the heartache of the Great Depression scoured the streets and archives of New Orleans. They searched high and low: from opera and cuisine to gambling and "sporting houses." They surveyed the wharfs, observed voodoo rituals, interviewed carnival clubs and photographed grand public buildings. And they produced a guide to New Orleans - troubling, romantic, evocative -- that has yet to be matched. Remarkably, many of the sites and attractions the WPA chronicled in 1938 are still around today. As the historian Lawrence N. Powell writes in his new introduction, "You can still follow one of its recommended automobile tours and not feel so much as three minutes behind the times."

I"m planning to review this one (although it will not really be a review but more an appreciation considering its history) for Voices of NOLA.

The Battle for Duncragglin by Andrew Vanderwal. From Tundra Books, this sounds like an excellent MG adventure, especially for boys. Here's the description:

One of history’s most turbulent times comes to vivid life in this thrilling new novel. Twelve-year-old Alex has been raised by his uncle since his parents disappeared on a trip to Scotland many years ago. He’s resigned to spending the summer in Scotland with yet another relative and finds himself on a farm near the ruined remnants of an ancient castle that is rumored to be haunted. Could it have a connection to his parents’ disappearance?

With three newfound friends, Alex sets out to discover the secret of a sealed cave along the rugged coast that borders the farm. The secret is far more powerful than anything they could have imagined, and they are catapulted to the very brink of a hellish past — the bloody late 13th century when the great Scottish rebel, William Wallace, was fighting a guerilla-style military campaign.

Please - William Wallace in a time travel story? How perfect is that??? Love the cover too.

The Killing Way: An Arthurian Mystery by Tony Hays. First in a new series set during the time of King Arthur and involving the character of Malgwyn ap Cuneglas who was once Arthur's right hand on the battlefield until his arm was cut off in battle and he wasn't left to die - as he preferred. He hates Arthur for saving him but still comes when asked to solve a murder mystery that is implicating Merlin. The synopsis:

Arthur is a young and powerful warrior who some would say stands on the brink of legend. Britain’s leaders have come to elect a new supreme king, and Arthur is favored. But when a young woman is brutally murdered and the blame is placed at Merlin’s feet, Arthur’s reputation is at stake and his enemies are poised to strike.

It's published as an adult title but I see a lot of teen possibilities here, especially for boys. We'll see how it reads.

Crows and Cards by Joseph Helgerson. This one is from HMH and set in 1849. A western! Zeb takes up with a riverboat gambler, crosses paths with a slave and learns from an Indian medicine man. I have no clue if this is going to be all cliches or funny and cool but I'm so happy to see it that I can't resist giving it a go. Cool cover too, isn't it?

The Bellini Madonna by Elizabeth Lowry. This is an adult title from FSG, a publisher I'm very conflicted about. I receive the FSG children's catalog, submit requests for review copies and never receive them. I do not receive the adult catalog but do receive numerous titles from the adult division throughout the year. Go figure. Anyway, The Bellini Madonna is another of those cool art history mystery type books:

Thomas Lynch was once a brilliant young art historian. Now he is a disgraced, middle-aged art historian, overly fond of the bottle and of his fresh young students.

But everything will change now that hes on the trail of a lost masterpiece, a legendary Madonna by the Italian master Giovanni Bellini. Insinuating himself into the crumbling English manor house where the painting may be concealed, Lynch attempts to gull the eccentric and perversely beautiful women who live therethough he himself seems to be the pawn in this elaborate game. A Victorian diary that draws Robert Browning into the paintings complicated provenance might provide the keyif only Lynch can manage to beat his hosts in the search.

In the end, it will be Lynch's own vulnerable heart that betrays the betrayer. Interlaced with complex clues and hidden jokes, The Bellini Madonna reels from the lush English countryside to the sternly lovely hill towns of the Veneto, from the fifteenth century to the twenty-first.

We'll see if it delivers on its promise.

Falconer on the Edge by Rachel Dickinson. Some of you may recall that I'm planning a feature on bird books this summer as they seem to just keep cropping up at my door. (My starred review of Corvus is up in the current issue of Booklist - more on that later this week.) Falconer is the story of Steven Chindgren who suffers some emotional losses when two of his birds re lost. I'm also intrigued by the coverage of falconry in the 21st century:

In addition to this challenge, Chindgren faces the danger to falconry that the modern world presents. Grouse habitat is being degraded by mining, agriculture, and gas industry interests. And the number of falconers is dwindlingthe corps is graying and has few acolytes.

Falconry is a sport that requires persistence, stoicism, and sacrifice; in this captivating account, Dickinson illuminates a fascinating subculture and one of its most hard core personalities.

The Sweetheart of Prosper County by Jill Alexander. This is a YA title from Feiwel & Friends that just sounds too sweet (and funny) to resist. It's not due out until this fall, so finding an image of the cover (which is great) is impossible. It's about almost 15 year old Austin who wants to be "the Sweetheart of Prosper County". In order to accomplish this she must participate in the FFA, raise an animal, hunt or fish and basically be an all-round rural goddess. She makes friends, including a cute boy, meets a rooster named Charles Dickens (prominent on the cover) and must help her mom get over the grief of losing her dad many years before. Sounds like wholesome goodness and perfect leisure time reading for the 8th-9th grade set (and adults too!).

The Book of William by Paul Collins. I'm a huge Collins fan so this was a very welcome surprise. I've enjoyed all of his books and I'm really looking forward to seeing what he has to say about Shakespeare. (Follow that Powells link and see that Nancy Pearl is a big fan as well.) From Bloomsbury:

Broken down into five sections, each tied to a different location and century, The Book of William explores the curious rise of the First Folio: Frankfurt (17th century), Fleet Street (18th century), the British Museum (19th century), the Folger Shakespeare Library (20th century), and Meisei University of Tokyo (21st century). It recounts the book's remarkable journey, as it lies undiscovered for decades, burns, sinks, is bought and sold, and ultimately, becomes untouchable. Finally, Collins speculates on Shakespeare's cross-cultural future as more and more Folios migrate to Japanese buyers, who are entering their contents into the electronic ether.

Finally, Deeply Rooted by Lisa Hamilton is a book I practically begged Counterpoint to send my way. I'm very excited about this one:

A century of industrialization has left our food system riddled with problems, yet for solutions we look to nutritionists and government agencies, scientists and chefs. Lisa M. Hamilton asks: Why not look to the people who grow our food?

Hamilton makes this vital inquiry through the stories of three unconventional farmers: an African-American dairyman in Texas who plays David to the Goliath of agribusiness corporations; a tenth-generation rancher in New Mexico struggling to restore agriculture as a pillar of his crumbling community; and a modern pioneer family in North Dakota who are breeding new varieties of plants to face the future’s double threat: Monsanto and global warming.

Threads of history and discussion weave through the tales, exploring how farmers have been pushed to the margins of agriculture and transformed from leaders to mere laborers.

These unusual characters and their surprising stories make the case that in order to correct what has gone wrong with the food system, we must first bring farmers back to the table.

As my editor at Booklist, Donna Seaman, would say, this is a very "worthy subject". Anything I can do to get more people reading and talking about it is time well spent.

Back tomorrow with catalogs received and books that looked good therein, and later this week the new issue of Eclectica and more Poe stories and discussion of books that I think all libraries should have plus additional appreciation of Nothing But Ghosts and why I loved Mare's War.

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In the past when I have come home we have been in such mad rush to do so many things and see so many people that I haven't spent much time at the beach. This is particularly annoying as my mother lives all of three minutes from it. (I'm not exaggerating - we actually timed ourselves coming home the other day.) This visit we decided to make the beach a priority so my son could really get to know and love it a bit like I do. Basically I wanted to give him a little taste of my own childhood which was spent in the water so much that I've often wondered how my brother and I don't have webbed feet.

While I was an all-day beach kid growing up I've been happy to spend just an hour or two there this time. (Those all day episodes are long over - thanks to all the skin cancer scars.) Today we went at noon which is a time I normally avoid but it was low tide and we are on a serious shell collecting binge. So, covered in sunscreen (which did an amazing job - not a bit of burn is to be found on me), we hit the beach that I grew up on. (My son calls this "Pepere's Beach" as it is where my father parked his beach chair for 25 years.) Here's what we saw:

One Pompano pulled in by a surf fisherman who gleefully looked forward to eating it for dinner
One shovelhead shark pulled in by another surf fisherman (he let several kids including my son touch it before he set it back into the water)
A bunch of crabs who proved to be uncatchable
A bunch of sand fleas who continue to creep me out even after all these years
One living sand dollar; something I have never seen in my life (and was promptly returned to the water so it could do whatever sand dollars do)
One sand dollar broken in half which we brought home and is very wicked cool (it was long dead)
Roughly one million shells and we took home a crazy amount of them

Oh - and a bunch of spring breakers who made inappropriate bathing suit choices. (Does no one look in the mirror anymore????)

I think one of the things that has frustrated me as a reader growing up in Florida is how rare it is to find writers who can capture just how crazy stupid and yet also deeply wonderful this state is. (John D. MacDonald is still the master.) You had to be on the beach today, with people from toddlers to eldery enjoying themselves, to appreciate how delightful it can be here. Yes - the summers are hell on earth (and I mean that literally) but there are days of grace that make me remember my childhood all over again like it has just been minutes gone by and not decades. My son ran screaming into the water today, laughing and splashing with abandon and the ghost of my seven-year old self was right there with him. I watched them both streak by me and was glad to be here to see it; glad to fall in love all over again with that little girl who never wanted to leave the beach.

I could have stayed all day; I hope my father saw us.

[The shovelhead, also known as the bonnethead, is the smallest of the hammerhead species.]

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