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The One and Only Ivan. Katherine Applegate. 2012. HarperCollins. 301 pages.

I am Ivan. I am a gorilla. It's not as easy as it looks.

 Want to read one of the best, best books of the year? May I suggest Katherine Applegate's verse novel, The One and Only Ivan. I can't promise that every reader will come to LOVE Ivan, Ruby, Stella, Bob, Julia, and George, but you might end up loving them just as much as I did. (Ivan is a gorilla; Ruby and Stella are elephants; Bob is a dog; George and Julia are two of the most sympathetic human characters in the novel.)

So what is it about? It's about a small group of animals on display at Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade. Ivan, the gorilla, is an artist whose works sell in the gift shop. He's been captive almost thirty years. Stella is one of his dearest friends, she's an elephant who knows quite a few tricks. She's a great storyteller, but, many of her stories are bittersweet. She's had a hard life to have such a great memory. Bob, the stray dog, is Ivan's other best friend, he's not really on display--not wild enough, not talented enough--but to Ivan, well, he's the best dog in the world. One day, Mack, the owner, brings someone new: a baby elephant named Ruby. Her arrival changes EVERYTHING for Ivan. For at long last, he has someone to protect. 

Within pages, I was hooked. Here is the second poem:

names


People call me the Freeway Gorilla. The Ape at Exit 8. The One and Only Ivan, Mighty Silverback.


The names are mine, but they're not me. I am Ivan, just Ivan, only Ivan.


Humans waste words. They toss them like banana peels and leave them to rot.


Everyone knows the peels are the best part.


I suppose you think gorillas can't understand you. Of course, you also probably think we can't walk upright.


Try knuckle walking for an hour. You tell me: Which way is more fun?

The narrative voice is so strong, so rich, so observant, so right. Here are just a few examples:

Humans speak too much. They chatter like chimps, crowding the world with their noise even when they have nothing to say. (3)

Anger is precious. A silverback uses anger to maintain order and warn his troop of danger. When my father beat his chest, it was to say, Beware, listen, I am in charge. I am angry to protect you, because that is what I was born to do. Here in my domain, there is no one to protect. (10)

It was Julia who gave me my first crayon, a stubby blue one, slipped through the broken spot in my glass along with a folded piece of paper. I knew what to do with it. I'd watched Julia draw. When I dragged the crayon across the paper, it left a trail in its wake like a slithering blue snake. (16)

Humans don't always seem to recognize what I've drawn. They squint, cock their heads, murmur. I'll draw a banana, a perfectly lovely banana, and they'll say, "It's a yellow airplane!" or "It's a duck without wings!" That's all right. I'm not drawing for them. I'm drawing for me. (17)

My visitors are often surprised when they see the TV Mack put in my domain. They seem to find it odd, the sight of a gorilla staring at tiny humans in a box. Sometimes I wonder, though: Isn't the way they stare at me, sitting in my tiny box, just as strange? (23)

Bob's tail makes me dizzy and confused. It has meanings within

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Eclipse
Warriors Power of Three, book 4
by Erin Hunter

Today, I bring you a guest review written by a member of the Wands and Worlds community who goes by the username Spirithunter. Spirithunter is an avid reader, writer and artist; her art appears on Deviantart and she is participating in NaNoWriMo for the second year. I saw her review of Eclipse on Goodreads and thought it was very well-written and insightful, and she graciously consented to allow me to repost it here.

It's been a while since I've been truly impressed by a Warriors book. The writing style is just on the higher end of "good", and usually the plot and characterization aren't particularly strong. Things have been pretty interesting in PoT, however. The Erins have done a good job of keeping us in the dark.

I think that if I had to choose one thing about Eclipse that I liked best (it's a hard decision), I think I would say that my favorite element was that I actually couldn't guess what would happen. Sure, I predicted a battle, but I didn't know when or with whom--and I sure wasn't expecting a battle like this. Sure, I figured there would be an eclipse, but I didn't know what it would mean to the Clans. Sure, I knew that Lionpaw was developing from a Stu to something more interesting, but I didn't expect it to be this clever. Also, ShadowClan becomes more than just its normal cold closed-doors self, and WindClan becomes more than a meager Hufflepuff-like band.

The plot and characterization in this book are great. Several of the characters who sort of lost their personalities before got them back, and the main characters' personalities were developed more as well. I went from merely curious in the outcome of the series to engaged and interested. I much look forward to Long Shadows this December, and I hope that the Warriors books can at least maintain this level of greatness at least until the end of this series.

If you liked this review, you can read more of Spirithunter's reviews on Goodreads, where she goes by the name Firekeeper.

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Here is a fascinating article about the ideological battle between Anne Carol Moore, the extremely influential librarian/children's book critic/expert who is credited with single-handedly inventing children's librarianship, and Katherine White, wife of E.B. White and children's book editor for the New Yorker. The touchstone of their battle--the publication of Mr. White's odd little book, Stuart

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Ratha's Creature
The First Book of the Named
by Clare Bell

What if there were prehistoric cats who took the first steps towards civilization? That's the premise behind Ratha's Creature and The Named series. The Named are a tribe of large prehistoric cats who have learned to keep herds of prehistoric herdbeasts. Ratha is a yearling in training to be a herder. Females are discouraged from becoming herders under the dictatorial rule of clan leader Meoran, but Ratha's teacher Thakur believed she had promise and convinced Meoran to allow him to train her. In addition to keeping the herdbeasts from wandering, the herders have to protect them from the Un-Named, cats who have no clan and no name and who live by preying on the herds of the Named.

When a forest fire temporarily drives the Named from their home, Ratha discovers that fire is not just an enemy: it's a tool that can be used and controlled. Her discovery frightens the clan and threatens Meoran's leadership, and Ratha is driven out of the clan. Exiled and alone, Ratha lives on the edge of survival until she meets one of the Un-Named, and discovers that not all of the Un-Named are as dimwitted as she has been led to believe.

Ratha's Creature is an intense, emotional roller coaster of a book. It's the coming of age story of a remarkable adolescent, but it's also a story of the eternal battle between social status quo and social change. Ratha is the perfect change agent: she's impulsive, rebellious, and stubborn, but also creative, courageous, and determined. She's a remarkable character that you can't help but like in spite of her shortcomings, and teens will identify with her struggle to make sense of the world around her and find her place in it.

It's the characters - and the interaction between them - that really make this book. Besides Ratha there's Bonechewer, appealing arrogant and sardonic, yet amazingly patient with Ratha's occasionally irascible nature. Then there's Fessran, courageous and loyal, who stands by Ratha even when Ratha loses faith in herself. And finally Thakur, who loves Ratha in his own way, yet fears the change that she represents.

Ratha's Creature is a fast read - I think I read it in less than 24 hours, which is fast for me, because I couldn't put it down. Yet there's a lot to chew on here, too, with an emotional depth and a complexity of social and psychological situations. And here's a remarkable thing: the book has 42 reviews on Amazon.com, and EVERY ONE of them is a five star review. How often do you see that happen?

This book is more appropriate for mature teens than for younger readers; there's a fair bit of graphic violence, and a mating scene which is quite intense, although not overly explicit in language.

Ratha's Creature was first published in 1983 and has long been out of print. It was just republished in 2007 by the Firebird Books imprint of Penguin. They also republished books 2, 3, and 4 of the series. The new edition of Ratha's Creature is available from Amazon.com here.

A brand new book in the series, Ratha's Courage, was originally scheduled for publication in 2007 by Firebird, but publication of this eagerly awaited sequel was inexplicably cancelled. Ratha's Courage is available as an e-book from Baen Books here and should be in print soon.

There's an interesting collection of Ratha's Creature fan art here.

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The success of Erin Hunter's Warriors series no doubt paved the way for the publication of Vasco: Leader of the Tribe, which is more of a poor man's Watership Down than a compelling animal drama. Vasco, a wharf rat, is one of the few survivors of a calculated campaign by Man to exterminate all rats from human habitats. Vasco finds himself the unexpected, but not really unwilling, leader of a rapidly expanding tribe of rats, also on the run from extermination. As he leads them from their homes, through a perilous sea journey to an unknown land, and eventually to settlement in a foreign jungle, Vasco's skills as a diplomat and rat of change are constantly called into use.

As an advocate for rats, I had great hopes for this book. But it was dire. There is none of the mythic purpose that grounds the Warrior books, where well organized clans of feral cats coexist. There's not even the genuine force of evil that propels the struggle in the Ga'hoole series. The rats of "Vasco" are all at odds with each other seemingly because they are fueled by constant panic and a diet of garbage. Vasco is a visionary in his wish to establish a stable life, rather than simply survive, but his is the lone voice of reason or optimism. And at 300+ pages, shifting from one rat fight to another is exhausting and tiresome.

As with any book that has been translated (in this case from French to English) there is always in my mind the thought that perhaps something has been lost in the process. But it's hard not to believe that the nihilistic tone of the book is thoroughly Continental. There are plenty of vicious battles in the Warriors books, but we also see the cats at play, exhilarated by their sense of purpose, and encouraged by their belief in the spirits. The rats in "Vasco" only exist to breed and eat. When I think of Ratatouille, where an ambitious rat also wanted to do more than just survive, I wish that "Vasco" provided more bright spots and less cruelty.

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I had listed fourteen books for this one. While I've read at least sixty (if not a hundred) books since September 23rd, I still haven't managed to finish all fourteen I listed. My number? 9 of the 14. I don't look at it as a failure however. How could I? I'm on the Cybils YA Nominating Panel, I've read over fifty books for that alone in these fall months. Not to mention the reading I've done for Librarians' Choices. So my original 14 were

Epic by Conor Kostick
Runemarks by Joanne Harris
The Sweet, Terrible, Glorious Year I Truly, Completely Lost It by Lisa Shanahan
Lemonade Mouth by Mark Peter Hughes
The Silver Cup by Constance Leeds
Into the Woods by Lyn Gardner
Total Constant Order by Crissa Jean Chappell
Before, After, and Somebody In Between by Jeannine Garsee
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Leonardo’s Shadow by Christopher Grey
A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban
Memoirs of A Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin
If A Tree Falls At Lunch Period by Gennifer Choldenko
Seeing Redd by Frank Beddor

You can see I've given links for the nine I've read. By far my favorite of the bunch is A Crooked Kind of Perfect. I love, love, love that book. I still plan on reading the others, but I'm realistic about it too. They'll get read when I come across them again in my boxes. And I'm not even going to start looking in my boxes for them until after the Cybils are over. And the Cybils won't be over, for me, until the first weekend of January. So since the challenge ends in the next week or two, I'm not going to get to anything else on the list.

The challenge is hosted by Callapidder Days. It runs from September 23rd through December 21rst.

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Garsee, Jeannine. 2007. Before, After, and Somebody In Between.

This book is a good book. But it is essentially the story about a young teen girl with an identity crisis. Her name is Martha. Martha Kowalski. Never has a teen girl hated her life more. Her drunk and neglectful mother. Her mother's abusive mother. Her equally impoverished neighbors living in the tenements. Her school. Her classmates. Nothing at all is going right in her life. She has one or two friends. But their lives are equally messed up. One has a mother dying of AIDS, one has been abandoned my a mother addicted to drugs. The last one also lives in an abusive environment where they beat a toddler. So who would want to be that girl if given another option. Certainly not Martha. When Martha is given--through dire circumstances--the opportunity to transform into Gina Brinkman, she jumps at the chance. Gina lives in a nice neighborhood. A rich neighborhood. Gina goes to an elite school. Gina has nice clothes and a bathroom all her own. (If I recall correctly.) Gina is a material girl. She can have a thousand luxuries that are new to her. And most of all, she feels like she's escaped the harsh realities of her life. But life is never that easy. Never that black and white. Never that clear cut. Who is she really deep down inside? What kind of girl is she?

This book has many ugly sides to it--the alcohol, the drugs, the physical and verbal abuse, sex, violence, etc. Martha is a character that doesn't really embrace the truth if she can get away with a lie. She lies. She lies a lot. Sometimes to other people. Sometimes only to herself. This is another book that shows that actions have consequences. Big consequences. And that life is full of hard choices. Choices you'll have to live with the rest of your life.

Overall, I liked it. It was well-written. This is a very human, very frail, sometimes cruel, sometimes naive narrator.

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The challenge is hosted by Callapidder Days. It runs from September 23rd through December 21rst.

Epic by Conor Kostick
Runemarks by Joanne Harris
The Sweet, Terrible, Glorious Year I Truly, Completely Lost It by Lisa Shanahan
Lemonade Mouth by Mark Peter Hughes
The Silver Cup by Constance Leeds
Into the Woods by Lyn Gardner
Total Constant Order by Crissa Jean Chappell
Before, After, and Somebody In Between by Jeannine Garsee
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Leonardo’s Shadow by Christopher Grey
A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban
Memoirs of A Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin
If A Tree Falls At Lunch Period by Gennifer Choldenko
Seeing Redd by Frank Beddor

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