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The Thickety: A Path Begins, by J.A. White (Katherine Tegen Books, May 6, 2014, upper middle grade/younger YA), is a gripping fantasy full of fascinating magic, but it is a dark one, not for the faint of heart!
Generations ago, Kara's people had been led by a charismatic leader to an island far from the rest of the world, to live free of the evil taint of magic. But thought the words of the leader were dutifully chanted, and all references to magic shunned, the island was far from being free of it. For on the boundaries of the settled lands loomed the great, magical, horrible wood known as the Thickety, and only the work of the Clearers--hacking and burning at its fringes (and risking death every day from deadly incursions of its magical creatures and vegetation) keeps it at bay. And though all on the island are taught that witchcraft is the worst evil, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Kara's own mother was killed for witchcraft when she was five. For the next seven years, she and her little brother have struggled onward, with no help from her deeply depressed father, and shunned by all the other folk. Kara, well-indoctrinated, won't admit her mother was a witch. But she was.
And now the Thickety is calling to Kara....and she crosses its boundary line. There in the strangeness of its shade she finds a magical book, one that lets her make magic of her own. But magic comes with a price. Kara must face supernatural and human enmity, and resist the lure of absolute power, or else join her own mother as a character in the stories of evil witches. But when magic seems the only way to save her brother's life, and her own, can she keep from letting her wild talents run free?
With momentum that builds from a slowish start to an ever faster turning of page, Kara's journey into magic is fiercely gripping. And I use "fierce" very much on purpose--this is not a "fun with magic in an enchanted woods" book. The grim beginning, with shunned, neglected Kara struggling to keep her little brother alive, sets the tone, and Kara's discovery that magic is real is not a joyous release. Rather, she quickly learns of the terror at the heart of the Thickety, and just as quickly learns that power can be horribly addictive (especially for one who has been powerless and ill-used).
As the story unfolds, all manner of dark injury, torture, and death become part of it. There is much to make a sensitive reader flinch, from your basic attack of a swarm of magically-controlled rats to flat-out torture. The book begins with the terrible death of Kara's mother, which I think is useful for weeding out readers who will be bothered! I wouldn't recommend this to the younger middle grade reader--as a parent myself, there are images I don't want my 11-year-old to have in his head just yet, though I might well offer it to him next year. That being said, the grimness is somewhat ameliorated by the fact that Kara never succumbs to the selfish misuse of her power, and stays "good," which keeps things from being too terribly disturbing!
My one quibble with the book is that a lot of physically challenging things happen to Kara (no water for three days, torture, a badly injured leg, etc.), but none of these things seem to hold her back--for instance, at one point, after the three days without water, she and her friend are communicating with hand signals because their mouths are so dry, but then have a long conversation the next paragraph down; at another point her leg is badly hurt, but a few pages later she's perfectly mobile.I think if you make your characters suffer terribly, there should be realistic physical consequences!
In any event, this is a really truly gripping story, which I read (to the extent my circumstances allow) in a single sitting at a very rapid pace. If you like dark fantasy with young heroines facing formidable obstacles, you might very well like
The Thickety very much indeed. And boy, does it end with a twist that makes the reader want More Now!
Here's
the (starred) Kirkus review; they suggest 11-14 as the readership age,which is just about right, especially if the younger readers have a taste for horror. And here's the starred
Publishers Weekly review (which pushes the age down to 8, making my eyebrows raise).
disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.
In my review of
The Menagerie, by Tui T. Sutherland and Kari Sutherland, I said, "You want a book that hits the sweet spot for the nine-year old mythical creature lover? This is what you are looking for." The second book in the series,
Dragon on Trial (HarperCollins, March 2014), has strengthened my conviction.
The menagerie in question is home to all manner of creatures, from unicorns and griffins and dragons to a goose that lays golden eggs. And it is the apparent murder of this goose that is the catalyst for this adventure. All the evidence points to a dragon named Scratch--and if Scratch is found guilty, he'll be exterminated.
Zoe and Logan, two middle school kids who are part of the Menagerie team, are convinced Scratch has been framed. But unless they can find who really committed the dastardly deed of goose murder (if murder it was), disaster won't befall Scratch alone--the whole menagerie might be shut down by those in Authority. Together with a new friend, a were-rooster named Marcus (a great addition to the cast, who provides comic relief that offsets the tension nicely), they set off on a detective hunt to find the answers they desperately need.
What makes this series a stand-out in kid appeal is that it beautifully combines the angsts of middle school life with a truly wonderful ménage of magical creatures. The characters and the set-up are so convincing that the menagerie almost seems possible. It's clear that the authors are truly enjoying themselves--so many fun details about the creatures!--and this enjoyment carries over into the reading experience.
Although the case of the missing goose is successfully resolved, bigger questions remain--someone is trying to sabotage the menagerie, and the disappearance of Logan's mom (whom he found out in the first book was a tracker of mythical creatures) remains a mystery. My young one and I cannot wait till book three comes out!
I didn't see anything in this book that made it clear, but I know from the first book that Logan happens to be African American--I hope it's might slightly more obvious in book 3, because it would be nice for readers to be able to pick up on it!
The above-mentioned young one and I are going up to Boston tomorrow to meet Tui T. Sutherland, at
the release party for The Brightest Night, the fifth book in her Wings of Fire series! So exciting. We are taking this one for her to sign too if possible....
Read the rest of this post
The People In Pineapple Place, by Anne Lindbergh (1982)
Ten year old August did not want to move with his mother from the countryside of Vermont to Georgetown in Washington, D.C. He did not want his parents to get divorced, and his mother to work full time. And he does not want to wait for the college kid looking after him to get off the phone so as to take him outside.
So off he goes, sad and angry, into the streets, and finds a cobblestone alley called Pineapple Place, where six old house are home to a bunch of kids who seem like they could be new friends for him. But though the kids, especially April, do become his friends, it quickly becomes apparent that Pineapple Place is rather...unusual.
It is not a spoiler to explain why, because it comes up quite close to the beginning of the story, and is the whole basic point of the point.
Back in the 1930s, a Pineapple Place resident decided that Baltimore was not the best place to be, and started moving all six houses around the country. And although the residents can leave their homes and venture into the new places they visit, only one of them can be seen and heard by the locals. And none of them have aged a day since Pineapple Place started its hoping.
Strangely, August can see them all....and the last days of his summer vacation become a bit of a mad-hatter series of excursions around the city- playing with invisible kids leads to wacky situations. And this is fun to read about, although it's a tad stressful that August's mother thinks for much of the book that he's making it all up.
But the fact that the Pineapple Place folk don't age gradually started casting a pall of horror over it all...especially when April's mother talks of how she had hoped to go back to college, and not spend her days pie-making (which is now her fate for eternity....). It reminded me very much of
Tuck Everlasting, but without the clear acknowledgement on the author's part that immortality is a bitter fate. Especially when you can't even interact with new people anymore because of being invisible.
However, the invisibility is alleviated somewhat by the fact that Pineapple Place revisits the 1930s on a regular basis to allow for grocery shopping, as the residents can be seen in their time of origin. At one point, they take August with him, and he gets to sight see in the past. This is the part that makes it time travel.
The book must be read with enough grains of salt to kill a thousand slugs. Why, for instance, must they scrounge around in trash cans for bits and bobs to use in the present when they are regularly going back to the 1930s for groceries? How are they paying for their groceries? Why are they putting up with the dictator of Pineapple Place who started moving them around in the first place? It really makes little sense. I am very keen now to read the sequel,
The Prisoner of Pineapple Place-- will they escape the madness?
Putting that issue aside, though, it's a fun and rather heart-warming story. The friendship between August and April is
nice, the adventures fun, and the premise certainly is thought provoking. I imagine that the target audience of 8-10 year olds will be a lot less bothered by it than me, and will probably find it truly magical.
(They will probably all have read
Wonder, too, and so the name "August" will be like an old friend. I wonder if we will see an uptick in its popularity 15 years from now...).
The Riverman, by Aaron Starmer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, upper MG leaning YA-ward, March 2014)
Alistair and Fiona were friends, back when they were little kids, then they drifted apart. But now, years later in middle school, Fiona shows up at Alistair's door, and asks him to write her biography.
"To sell a book, you need a description on the back. So here's mine: My name is Fiona Loomis. I was born on August 11, 1977. I am recording this message on the morning of October 13, 1989. Today I am thirteen years old. Not a day older. Not a day younger."Which is of course impossible.Fiona has spent days of her life far away from upstate New York in a magical universe called Aquavania. There she reveled in the creation of her own small world, and there she met other kids, living in the worlds of their own imaginings--bright, extravagant places where to wish is to make things manifest. But Aquavania is not safe- kids, many of them Fiona's friends, are vanishing. Their stories, their worlds, themselves are falling prey to the sinister Riverman.And Fiona is afraid she might be next.Slowly, as Fiona tells the story of Aquavania, and the shadow of the Riverman falls across its wonders, Alistair comes to believe that there is indeed a darkness haunting his friend...But is it a darkness in our world, or is the magic real? And what can one ordinary boy do?Alistair is the single point of view character, and the reader learns and thinks and wonders right along with him. His fears for Fiona are pretty much those that the reader might have, and his difficulty accepting Aquavania perfectly understandable. Like Alistair, I found myself dismissive of Aquavania at first, but then, dragged inexorably into a story whose reality was undeniable, I read faster and faster, with sparks of metaphoric connections going off in my mind like crazy. I grew to have genuine delight in the manifestations of imagination that is Aquavania (accompanied by considerable unease as to the addictive nature of these imaginings), and genuine concern for both kids. And I also developed a really (justifiable) conviction that things weren't going to end up all rainbow-unicorny.
This is the first book of a series, but though the ending isn't neatly resolved, I've read stand-alone books that offered less in the way of closure, and so I did not feel deeply bothered (though I am immensely curious to see what happens next).
So, yes, I liked
The Riverman, and now I am thinking hard about what sort of reader I would give it too. I think the older middle school kid, the eighth grader who might be a bit of an outlier, who isn't deeply into more traditional fantasy (there are no dragons, swords, or spells), who doesn't mind being puzzled, might well like it very much indeed. As well as relating to Alistair, who is a character along those lines himself, there's much that would appeal--Fiona is a character with spark and zing, the mystery is mysterious, and the reader is not forced to believe, if they don't feel like it, in the magical world, which might appeal to young rationalists.
I would be hesitant to give it to the younger reader who is deeply invested in "story" as a source of emotional comfort, because the whole point of the book (I think maybe) is stories (beloved imaginings as well as the stories people are living) getting twisted out of true. There's also mature content--the possibility that Fiona is being abused in real life, and some rather disturbing violence--that makes this not one to automatically hand to the ten year old who loves "fantasy worlds."
Though I am glad
The Riverman is getting lots of positive buzz for its own sake, I'm hoping that it will lead more people to Aaron Starmer's first book,
The Only Ones (my review, with a white-ed out spoiler at the bottom, so be warned). I enjoyed
The Only Ones lots myself (and it has stuck in my mind just beautifully, always a good sign), but I am particularly fond of it because it is one of the very few books that my hideously picky uncooperative-with-regard-to-reading eighth-grader has truly enjoyed. So far he is resisting this one, which is deeply annoying, since he fits the description above to a tee.
disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.
The Art of Flying, by Judy Hoffman (Disney-Hyperion, Oct. 2013, MG) is a magical adventure in which a bird is transformed into a boy, and an ordinary girl becomes his friend.
Before I begin, I want to say that though this isn't a book that worked for me, it got
a good review from Kirkus, and I am perfectly prepared to acknowledge that my opinion might not be widely shared, because it's mostly based on personal taste.
Fortuna, an ordinary girl, embarks on a most extraordinary adventure when her mom sends her to help out two old ladies nearby. Turns out the ladies are witches, and one of them has just committed one of the worst magical crimes there is--she's turned three birds into people. When Fortuna arrives at their home, only one is still there, a boy the witches are calling Martin. The witches plan to rope Fortuna in to keep Martin safe, so that he can be re-transformed, but Martin has a mind of his own--he must find his brother, who is also a boy, and he takes off into the woods.
And Fortuna, somewhat to her surprise, finds herself his ally, and possible friend, bringing him home with her. Martin's brother has been befriended as well, by Fortuna's old best friend, Peter.
But in the meantime, there is trouble:
--The third bird transformed was a sadistic owl, and now that he is human, he relishes the thought of having more scope for his nefarious pleasures.
--a third witch wants to get the fist two witches into trouble
--the council of birds hopes to find all three ex-birds, and foil the bad ex-owl
--if Martin and the other two aren't transformed back in time, they will be human forever.
--Fortuna isn't sure she wants Martin to be a bird again. As a boy, he still has the power of flight, and shares it her in a most magical way....
So. There are many lots of bits happening, and the result was that I wasn't reading the book I thought I was going to read. I thought I was going to read about a friendship between boy/bird and girl that was going to be a slow burn, introspective kind of story, but instead the feel of
The Art of Flying tilted much more to magical happenings of an exiting sort. It's the sort of book that really should have a more colorful cover with witches and brightness to it, like an
Eva Ibbotson middle grade fantasy, or an
E.D. Baker book. And fans of those two authors should enjoy it lots.
For me, it wasn't a great fit. The story felt a tad scattered, rather than reading as an organic whole. There were many point of view shifts, sometimes the particular words used to describe the characters' reactions seemed odd to me, and there were details that didn't help the world of the story come alive. The council of birds, or "feathren" as they call themselves, didn't appeal to me--the almost comic way in which they are portrayed diminished the
gravitas of Martin's situation, which interested me much more. And I was deeply disappointed by Fortuna...
That being said, I thought the author did a lovely job with her portrayal of Martin as bird learning to be a boy, and I enjoyed that aspect of the book lots.
If you think "magical fun with witches and birds, in which a girl learns to fly" sounds good, give this one a try; if you think "character-driven novel about identity and learning what it means to be human" sounds good, this might not be what you are looking for.
Dark Lord: School's Out, by Jamie Thomson (Walker Childrens, Feb., 2014 in the US)
Give these books to any young fantasy gamers in your life. Give them to any Goth Girls you know who don't mind a bit of fun being poked at them. Give them to any fantasy reading kid who wants a break from the serious side of the genre. Give me
the third book, even though it's not even out yet in the UK, let alone over here....
As was told in book 1,
Dark Lord: the Early Years (
my review), the Dark Lord of the Dark Lands has been defeated by the power of Good, and sent into another realm--our world. No longer a fearsome being with terrible powers, he's now a kid in foster care named Dirk Lloyd. His powers are (for the most part) gone, and more importantly, much of the vile evil ichorosity inside him ended up spewing forth onto the parking lot where he landed. But he still knows who he really is....and he won't let his foster brother, Chris, and the Goth girl Sooz, their good friend, forget either (and happily all of Dirk's posturing and threats and Dark Lordliness stay this side of funny).
But in any even, an effort to restore Dirk to the Dark Lands at the end of Book 1 went wrong, and Sooz was the one who travelled there! But fortunately, Sooz (thanks to her Goth proclivities) is undaunted (though with nicely contrasting moments of daunted homesickness and despair, which I liked--so often young heroes are just too brave for me to take). And fortunately Sooz is in possession of Dirk's dark ring, which gives her magical powers. She finds Dirk's Dark Tower, gathers together his minions, and sets herself up as a Dark Queen. Only, because she'd not actually evil, her rule is more benevolent than not.
(I really really loved this part of Sooz's story. The exploring of the tower, the redecorating, the henchman befriending, the wardrobe choices she makes-- all delightful).
And in the meantime, Chris and Dirk are working on rescue plans, including the transformation of Chris' cell-phone into a dark phone that can call Sooz....
And also in the meantime, the "good" guys are trying to kill Dirk in our world, destroy Sooz in their world, and throw into prison anyone who disagrees with them...
So basically the tremendously fun premise of book 1 (Dark Lord in kid's body) is now part of a richer, bigger story that is still tremendously fun, but with more depth to it. There's a dash of serious-ness viz friendships, loyalty, and the blurriness between good and evil. Dirk is one of those delightfully ambiguous anti-heroes, and the tension between Dirk the Friend and Dirk the Dark Lord is nicely tense.
And so at last the story of
the Infinity Ring comes full circle--with
The Iron Empire, we are once more back with James Dashner, who wrote the first book of the series (
A Mutiny in Time). Sera, Dak, and Riq have travelled through the centuries fixing Break after Break--all the bits of history that didn't happen as they should have. Now they have travelled to the time when it all began. It is the age of Alexander the Great, and the time of Aristotle--who founded the league of Hystorians who sent the threesome off on their quest.
The mission seems simple. If Sara, Dak, and Riq can keep Alexander from an untimely death, they will have healed the last break, averted the cataclysm that will otherwise engulf the earth, and they'll get to go home to a better world (except, perhaps, Riq, whose future might have been lost due to the changes in the past*). But to their horror, they find their old nemesis Tilda has gotten to Greece before them....and nothing is going to be easy.
I enjoyed this one quite a bit--perhaps because I knew that Finally there would be an end to all the trials and tribulations and excitements, which, though exiting, had filled the previous books almost to the point of saturation. I liked seeing Aristotle play a real role, and Alexander was rather fun to meet as well. And it did indeed all resolve in a satisfactory way...and although this isn't actually the end of the series, at least there's a bit of a breather!
And in this book, the bickering and tensions between the three kids was diminished--they've come to rely on each other, accept each other, and work as a team. Since I'm the sort of reader who doesn't thrive on interpersonal stress, I appreciated this.
This isn't a series that is deeply educational--although young readers will acquire a few basic facts (such as Aristotle being Alexander's tutor), it's not the sort of time travel that gives a rich and detailed picture of the past (not a complaint, just saying). But for those who love action and adventure given point and zest by time travel, these books should be just right.
Nice detail in the cover art I appreciated: it's not always the white boy (Dak) who's shown front and center in the picture of them that's on every back cover. On this one, it's Riq:
disclaimer: review copy received from Scholastic for review
*When reading this, my little one, already wise to the ways of stereotype, said cynically "Oh, the black kid dies." In case you are worried about this too, he
does not die, but stays with Alexander, renamed Hephaestion.
Switched at Birthday, by Natalie Standiford (Scholastic 2014, Middle Grade).
Through magical happenstance, two girls who share nothing but their birthday are switched into each other's bodies when they turn 13. Lavender is an schulmpy, clutzy, poorly-groomed outlayer, who makes no effort to practice any sort of middle school social graces, in part as a gesture of defiance against the taunts and torments she receives from the Beautiful Girls. Scarlet is the leader of those girls, star of the soccer team, polished to a shiny gloss, and seemingly safe from all the vicissitudes of life. But when the girls start living life in each others bodies, they both grow wiser, and when they switch back, their lives are changed for the better.
Although I did appreciate the fact that neither of the two girls ended up perfect in every way. They are still themselves, just with more self-awareness, open-ness, and empathy.
Here's what I enjoyed--the difficulties the two girls had convincingly living each other's lives. Among other difficulties, like finding something to wear in each others closet, poor Lavender has to take to the soccer field, and poor Scarlet has to deal with the mean-ness that's part of Lavender's daily life at school, forced to endure harassments of that she had once had a role in inflicting.
I must say that the mean-ness of this particular middle school made the book hard going--I don't like to read about cruel girls throwing chicken pot pies at those they despise (and surely this is exaggeration? It doesn't really happen, does it????). Of course, the mean and beautiful girls had to be hateful to make the plot work, but still...
More interesting. though less graphically brutal, than the plot line of outcast girl bespattered by lunch were the familial problems that Scarlet, though apparently perfect, is dealing with. She suffers from a manipulative, domineering step-father whose main point in the story is to put Scarlet, her mother, and her step-brother down. Again, his antagonism is not limed with too subtle a brush, but it's not a subtle book, so I wasn't expecting nuance, and was not bothered. Scarlet actually enjoys the warm family dynamics of Lavender's family, unpolished as they are...
A good one for girls who enjoy reading about the turmoils of middle grade life (and though I am against gender marketing in general, some books just will appeal more to girls, in as much as they are solidly from the girl point of view). The fantasy premise (explained just enough to make the reader not whiningly question what happened) makes it fun, and the ending is comforting (spoiler--Lavender and Scarlet are now friends, and there's a nice little bit of romance).
Here's another review at
Ms. Yingling Reads
Hilda and the Troll, by Luke Pearson, is a hardcover reprint from Flying Eye Books (Sept. 2013) of the first graphic novel about an adventurous Scandinavian girl named Hilda (originally titled Hildafolk). Hilda lives up in the mountains, with all sorts of magical persons for neighbors. This particular installment of her adventures (there are two others--
Hilda and the Midnight Giant, and
Hilda and the Bird Parade) is my favorite, quite possibly because it has the thinnest plot of the three, and one can enjoy the magical world free of any particular anxiety as to outcome!
Hilda and her blue, horned, fox friend (so adorable!) are having a peaceful time of it--sleeping out in a tent when it rains (so as to appreciate the snugness of it more), exploring the hills and sketching interesting things. But then Hilda comes across a troll rock--will it come alive at night and come down the hill, with ravenous intent? So she hangs a bell on its long stone nose, to give warning. And then falls asleep at its feet, and is woken much later by the bell as the troll starts to move! Dark is falling fast...can she make it home through the snowfall?
It all works out in a very satisfying way, and though I liked the other two Hilda books just fine, I loved this one.
Like I said, this is the lightest of the series in terms of plot, and in terms of illustration too--literally, as there is more color and more daylight and warm interior firelight! It's also the most amusing and most charming. I loved the map-reading giant, the wood person who keeps coming to Hilda's house, and all the interior details of Hilda's house that we get to see. I am also biased in favor of characters who have meaningful hobbies, so I loved to see independent observer of the world Hilda set off with her sketchbook.
Hilda and the Troll is the best book in which to meet Hilda, though it is the most recent hardcover of the three. Seven year olds (or even kids a bit younger) and kids on up as far as you want to go should enjoy it very much indeed.
I am currently in the middle of four books I am not enjoying--I have started to question too much, to talk back snippily to the words on the page, and once that happens, all escapism is lost. Happily, there was a fifth book in active play--
Rose and the Magician's Mask, by Holly Webb-- which was much nicer to read. My questions were all internal to the story, of a wondering, speculative kind, and I never once was kicked out of the narrative by infelicities.
Rose and the Magician's Mask is the third book about Rose, an orphan girl with magical powers in an alternate 19th-century England. The first,
Rose, was published here in the US in 2013 (and was shortlisted for the Cybils), the second,
Rose and the Lost Princess, comes out here this April. Some of us couldn't wait, and me and my boys went and ordered all four Rose books and the first book in the spin-off series about Lily from the UK.
In any event, in Rose and the Magician's Mask, a powerful mask is stolen by a magic-wielding antagonist, and taken off to Venice...a city steeped in magic. And Rose and her cohert, including Gus the cat, set off to find the mask and thwart the antagonist. It is a lovely magical Venice, full of creepiness and mysetery. And though I would have liked slightly more forward progress with Rose's magical education, and slightly brisker character development (both are happening, but not very fast!) it was, all in all, satisfying.
If you have an eight to ten year old reader of fantasy around, do try
Rose (and its sequels, as they come out) on him or her. The US covers are happily more gender neutral than the very girl oriented UK ones; none of the kids in my ten year old's class batted an eyelash at the cover of
Rose, but apparently some boys asked my son why he was reading this one (not that he cared).
Watermusic, by Sarah Sargent (1986, back when a book could have as few as 120 pages), is the second book I finished for today's
middle grade readathon. It came home with me from the library discards I was sorting for the booksale. It is the sort of book that just goes to show that the 1980s were a strange time and it is not my fault I turned out the way I did. I am breaking my thoughts on this book into very short paragraphs for clarity's sake.
Our heroine, Laura, is a a mopey/day dreamy 13 year old flute player with no close friends and a neurotic/sensitively perceptive sense that there is more to life than meets the eye.
Laura's mother has a job, but keeps her house spotless. She is proud of her synthetic wall to wall carpet, her distressed coffee table that came with scratches already in place. She is quick to wield the "Gleam and Go" and the bug spray at the first sign of trouble (Hint: Laura's mother is a metaphor for "modern humanity distanced from nature).
The batty anthropologist who doesn't keep the shrubs outside her Victorian house pruned hires Laura to help unpack ethnographic collections from the mountains of Peru. She choose Laura because of Laura's sensitivity; she herself is all about sensitivity to higher thought etc.
Except that she is NOT SENSITIVE to the fact that people living in the mountains of Peru might want to keep their ancestral sacred artifacts. Good anthropologists don't excavate their own tunnels into secret shrines to steal people's sacred giant bats that are sleeping in suspended animation and that are really seraphs (beings of pure thought, who fly singing purely through the sky when not in suspended animation in caves, or being stolen by anthropologists). Wanting to take the bat/seraph home to the US and have fun with pure thought does not, strangely, seem to me like a good enough reason to dig tunnels and pillage sacred places.
But Laura doesn't grasp this, and plays along (literally, on the sacred flute also pinched from the bat/seraph cave), and the bat/seraph wakes up, and it and the anthropologist go off to the realm of pure thought or something which involves flying together over the Andes.
Leaving Laura to deal with the Antithesis of Pure Thought--the swamp thing/monster that the flute music has summoned up out of the drain!!!!!
Happily it turns out the swamp thing is actually the Mermaid of Fecundity and Love and giving it fruit and a knife sends it home again.
There is more to the book, but not much more (an Indian doctor, for instance, gets to add a touch of Eastern Wisdom).
In case you ever want to write a high school essay on this book, I will help: Laura's mother and the anthropologist are both, in different ways, making bad choices by distancing themselves from the world of insects and over-ripe cantaloupe (which is what the swamp mermaid smells like). One can assume that the writer thinks the eighties are/were bad and we are/were killing too many insects with our household toxins, but also thinks that pure thought, devoid of emotion, is bad and we must embrace as well the Mermaid of Fecundity or something. Which I agree with, but gee, this is a weird book.
I turn now to see what reviews in the 1980s though of it:
Publisher's weekly: "a strange but gentle metaphysical story of a young girl's discovery of the different planes of human existence.....Deep and haunting, this story can be enjoyed both for its fine fantasy and its delicate symbolism."
If that review thinks the symbolism is delicate, I shudder to think what overt would look like.
School Library Journal: "As one of the characters comments, "This has to be one of the most amazing things I've ever heard of." Sargent's slender novel almost defies description, but it is so beautifully written that it's worth making a little extra effort to suspend disbelief....Watermusic is recommended for private enjoyment and reading aloud with thoughtful young teens."
I do not think I would want to try reading it aloud to even the most thoughtful of teens today. I think you would loose them at giant bat/seraph.
Note on cover: I showed it to my 13 year old son, and asked if he could imagine the girl showing up at his school. I got a loud No in response.....but the hairstyle sure is accurate. I have the pictures to prove it. Sigh.
Today I'm taking part in
the readathon that's kicking off this year's Middle Grade March, and finally, after months off book guilt, I have finished Grave Images, by Jenny Goebel (Scholastic, November 2013). The book guilt comes from the fact that when Grave Images arrived in my life, I was right in the middle of reading for the Cybils Awards...and though Grave Images travelled with me to Austen for last fall's Kidlitcon, and though I kept moving it to more conspicuous places within my house, I just never got to it till now.
In one sentence--Gothic-esque horror for the young (probably girl) reader who likes creepy but who doesn't actually want to be scared too much.
Bernie (short for Bernadette) helps her dad out as much as she can with his gravestone carving business. She's never felt it was morbid at all--it's just a trade, allowing for some artistic creativity (which she values). But then a mysterious stone carver knocks on their door. His artistry at etching portraits into stone is astounding, so good it seems almost impossible that he could have done it by hand with his old tools. The man and his tools give Bernie the chills...and rightly. For there is Dark Evil afoot, and the beautiful stone carvings the man makes hide a terrifying truth!!!! (cue sinister music.)
So. Bernie and her annoying not a friend but of course really a friend Michael start to probe into the past of the mysterious artist, uncovering much creepiness. Bernie's dreams become haunted. And finally, in a cemetery at night Bernie must confront the evil that's invaded her life...and not give into the temptation it offers. (Gothicly, it involves an apparition in a white flowing gown.)
This one is just fine to give to a ten year old girl looking for a bit of a chill that won't actually lead to nightmares. There is death, but it's people dying of magically induced heart-attacks, as opposed to more troubling dismemberment by hell hounds or some such. There's a bit of budding kid romance, but Bernie and Michael are 13, so I guess a kiss on the cheek and some hand holding isn't that shocking.
It didn't quite work for me--the horror wasn't particularly subtle or chilling, and I could have done without the underlining of lessons learned that we get at the end. On the plus side--religion as part of ordinarily life is scarce in kid's fantasy; here Catholisism is a part of the way things are (though not involved in the horror element of the story).
Short answer--the target audience might well enjoy it; grown-ups, not so much.
Disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher
Sherlock, Lupin, and Me: the Dark Lady, by "Irene Adler" (Capstone, 2014, first published in Italy in 2011) is the story of three kids--Sherlock Holmes, Arsène Lupin, and Irene Adler--who become friends in a coastal French town in 1870. Sherlock and Arsène are already best friends, and when Irene arrives in town for vacation she is delighted to become a partner in their adventurous lives--she is the sort of 19th-century girl who chaffs against societal restrictions, and gives her Mama conniption fits. But when a dead body washes up on shore, Irene and the boys find themselves with a mystery to solve that leads them into the dark underworld of the not-so-peaceful town.... They must use their wits to solve the case of the dead man, and it's only when they realize why he had a single playing card in his pocket--the Queen of Spades, the titular Dark Lady of the title-- that the reason for his death becomes clear.
In one important respect, I feel well qualified this book from the point of view of the target audience. Like many 10-13 year olds, I have never read a single Sherlock Holmes story; not an original one by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, nor any Sherlockian re-imaginings. So here I was, meeting him for the first time (though I had, of course, acquired a general sense of his personality from cultural osmosis), and could take what I was given at more or less face value.
In essence, this is a fine "plucky kids solving mystery" story, that fans of that genre should enjoy just fine. The characters are engaging, challenging each other both mentally and in feats of physical daring (like rooftop jumping) during the course of their adventure. It's the sort of book that I'd happily recommend to the kind of quirky kid who might well become interested in all things Steampunk in a few years--partly because of the cover, and the lovely endpapers with their illustrations of historical ephemera and the neat full page black and white illustrations that start each chapter, and partly just because it's a fun historical adventure.
That being said, there's a certain amount of serendipity involved in the solving, and considerably less preternatural powers of deduction being exhibited than I had expected (which I found disappointing). On top of that, there's a certain amount of suspension of disbelief required to accept that these kids are poking their noses into an ongoing investigation around the town without much adult response. Those who like really zesty mysteries that allow for intense reader engagement in solving the case might be a tad disappointed. The target audience is also going to be more willing to take young Sherlock at face value as he is presented here-- a relatively normal kid, showing few signs of the brilliant detective he is going to become--and will also more readily accept young Irene as a person, rather than something of a stock character (plucky girl anachronistically defining parents and joining boys in adventure).
Throughout the book there are hints of what the future will bring, that I think are more nudges to grown-up readers than information that adds value for the young reader. I myself had never heard of
Arsène Lupin, and so was disconcerted to be told point blank that he was going to grow up to become a thief--it kicked me out of the story at hand. I had never heard of
Irene Adler, presented as the author--she is an actual character in some Sherlockian adventures to come, and based on what I've just read, her relationship with young Sherlock might contradict what is "supposed" to happen in the original stories. But I'm willing to grant that it's a neat premise.
My own maddeningly picky reader 13-year old who's interested in Steampunk and the 19th century is showing encouraging signs of interest--I shall continue to leave the book lying around the house in various positions of noticability in hopes that he might actually read it, because I think he would enjoy it!
disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher
I must say that life was easier back before school started--before I had to leave for work, I had two or three beautiful hours of morning solitude, no socks to find, lunches to pack, buses to put children...which meant that blogging was easier. And I would return from work to more peaceful relaxation time, without endless chivying of reluctant homework doers. I guess I will have to try to write more posts on the weekends...
But in any event, here is a quick look at The Monster in the Mudball, by S.P. Gates, a new book for upper elementary/younger middle school kids from Tu Books, the multicultural sci fi/fantasy imprint of Lee and Low.
The mudball had sat, undisturbed, on the top shelf of closet in London for 20 years, until the day it fell to the floor, and came into contact with water. The mud cracks, and out come feet with boney toes and talons...and young Jin watches in horror as the mudball runs off into the street.
Prisoned inside the mud was a Zilombo, an ancient monster from Africa. Now it's found a den in a derelict waterfront district, near the warehouse where Jin's Chinese grandparents make glorious Chinese dragons for a living. Zilombo had killed many times before, and now she is hungry again. And Jin's baby brother, nicknamed Smiler seems like the perfect tasty morsel.
But A.J. Zauyamakanda, Mizz Z. for short, Chief Inspector of Ancient Artifacts, soon arrives on the scene, determined to recapture the monster. But each time Zilombo returns to life, she has new powers...and Mizz Z., who has fought her before back in her native Malawi, might not be so lucky this time.
Jin and his big sister, Frankie, find themselves caught in a nightmare as they help battle Zilombo, desperately trying save their brother from her talons...
This is the sort of exciting Kid vs Monster book that has lots of older Elementary appeal. There is a lot of monstrous ickiness, lots of danger, and lots of action. Zilombo is almost too much monster to take--the new powers she's developed, though necessary for the plot, seem a tad excessive, though that probably won't bother the young readers, busily cheering Jin and Frankie on! What makes Zilombo interesting is that she's also developing more personhood--with this new awakening, she's beginning to realize that she's lonely, and her nascent fondness for Smiler wars with her savage hunger. Without that bit of monster character development, she would have just chomped him, so it's utterly necessary to the story and works rather well.
Jin is an unusual hero, in that he has dyspraxia, aka "clumsy child syndrome" -- and so he has to be more conscious and self-aware than your typical kid is during monster hunting. He has to work at it, which is a nice twist.
This is one I'd give to a fourth grade boy, or thereabouts, who enjoys stories in which ordinary kids fight extraordinary monsters! I'm not sure there's quite enough depth to satisfy much older readers, although Mizz Z.'s job as Inspector of Ancient Artifacts has intriguing potential...
(and here I am again with a label diemma--fantasy, because it's about a mythical type creature, or science fiction, because it's monsterous cryptozoology....I think I will go with the former).
Here's another review, at
Ms. Yingling Readsdisclaimer: ARC received from the publisher
Lockwood and Co.: The Screaming Staircase, by
Jonathan Stroud (Disney-Hyperion, upper Middle Grade, September 17, 2013)
In an alternate England, something (not explained yet) went awry, and the country is plagued by ghosts. Ghosts who can kill, which makes them especially troublesome. Fortunately, they can be dispatched by those with the proper equipment and training (as shown on the cover). Kids can see the ghosts better than grown-ups...and so they are the combatants in the front line of ghost hunting, which, of course, means that grown-ups can exploit them. And replace them when the ghosts kill them.
But Lockwood and Co. is a different sort of ghost-hunting business. Anthony Lockwood, still young enough to see ghosts himself, runs his own company. And when Lucy Carlyle, down her luck after her previous employment went sour in a deadly way, knocks on the door, he gives her a job. Supported by a third teen, the somewhat nerdy George (the research arm of the organization), Lockwood and Co. is ready to take the ghost hunting world by storm...
Except that things go wrong. Burning down a house by accident may be a surefire way to get rid of haunted room, but it's expensive. To pay of the debt incurred after that mischance, Lockwood and Co. agree to take on the ghosts of one of the most haunted houses in England...a place that can kill a ghost hunting kid, no matter how smart or well-prepared he or she might be.
So that's more or less the set-up, but it doesn't doesn't do justice to the adventures of ghost hunting and all the details of the world-building and the near-death experiences and restless hauntings and old murder mystery etc.!
It's mainly Lucy's story--she's the newcomer to Lockwood and Co., and we meet the two boys through her, and what is especially great is that we don't know any more about them than she does, and it is clear that there is just tons more to them than we see in this first book! The reader is given a chance to think and wonder, and I appreciated that. I enjoyed their company, too--they are smart, and sarcastic, and more vulnerable than they'd like to think they are....
So great characters, great premise, exciting ghosts and I Cannot Wait till the next book, when more about the very charming Anthony Lockwood, and more about the geekily appealing George, might be revealed! We already know Lucy pretty well, but I'm curious about how her relationships with the boys might change...
Note on age of reader: the ghosts are scary, the blood is bloody, and the deaths are real. I'm not giving this one to my ten year old...maybe next year, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it to third or fourth graders. But it definitely feels more Middle Grade than YA--it's plucky kids taking on the grown-up world, rather than teens becoming grown-ups and finding luv. Give this one to a smart eleven- or twelve-year-old who likes a bit of violent supernatural gore, or the reader who likes zesty mysteries and intelligent writing, and who can tolerate supernatural gore, or some combination of the two.
I was a pretty appreciative reader myself (mostly because of being really interested in the characters). Leila was too--here's
her post at Kirkus.
Reviewed from an ARC procured for me at ALA by Anamaria of
Books Together, to whom I am very grateful.
The Contagious Colors of Mumpley Middle School, by Fowler DeWitt, illustrated by Rodolfo Montalvo (Atheneum, Middle Grade, September 3, 2013), is tailor-made for kids who like their wacky middle school science fun with glowing snot. And glowing puke...
Young Wilmer Dooley wants to follow in the footsteps of his father, famous for his invention of SugarBUZZZZ, 12 fluorescent colored flavors of high energy fun. So Wilmer has set his sights on the sixth grade science medal...and if he can get the beautiful Roxy to smile favorably on him, that would make his year even better.
When his classmates start flashing fluorescent colors of his own, and bouncing of the walls with manic energy (more so than usual), Wilmer knows he has his science project. So he sets of to find the cause of this colorful contagion in true scientific style. And yes, glowing snot and puke samples are an essential part of his data. But there are those who want Wilmer to fail--his hostile science teacher (threatened by his intelligence) and his sixth-grade rival, Claudius, who's determined to take on the role of Evil Genius.
The stakes get higher when Wilmer discovers the source of the epidemic...and learns that, if left untreated, his classmates might well explode...
So yes, there's ick (not exactly appealing to the grown-up reader). But there are kids out there who will doubtless find it funny as all get out. The colorful contagion and its manifestations are divertingly presented. Looking past the snot, the book actually offers a nice introduction to epidemiology and the scientific method, that should appeal to the scientifically-minded reader who can tolerate wackiness.
I'm not quite sure that fifth and sixth grade boys, the most likely readers, will appreciate the amount of page time (considerable) given to Wilmer's unrequited crush--from my own experience, boys that age still shun open acknowledgement of that part of life (finding it more disturbing than glowing snot). The book opens with Wilmer day-dreaming about Roxy, which might make it off-putting.
I also can't help be bothered by the minor but distressing fact that Wilmer took fourteen test-tubes home from his science classroom. This gives his teacher, who suspects him, a legitimate reason to dislike him, and given that Wilmer's dad is a scientist, couldn't he have just asked at home?
Final answer: offer it to kids fascinated by gross science, with a tolerance for the absurd (this is one of those handy cases where readers who find the cover appealing will almost certainly enjoy the book).
Courtesy of the publishers, I'm hosting a giveaway of one copy of The Contagious Colors of Mumpley Middle School plus a box of custom-made Contagious Colors band-aids! Just leave a comment to enter.
Here's another review (and giveaway) at
GreenBeanTeenQueendisclaimer: review copy received from the publisher
Ragnarok, the end of the world in violence and freezing winter, fortold in Norse mythology, is coming...but instead of taking place far off in long ago Scandinavia, it's about to take place in the modern US. And there's just one little problem--the Norse gods, who were fated to fight in the great battle against the forces of darkness, are dead.
But they have descendants.
Loki's Wolves, by K.L. Armstrong & M.A. Marr (Little Brown, 2013), is the story Matt, a thirteen year old boy who's grown up in South Dakota knowing that he's descended from Thor. What he didn't expect was that he would have to play Thor's part in Ragnarok...and what is worse, the elders of his family are certain that he has no chance of winning.
Guided (cryptically) by the Norns, Matt is determined not to give up, and sets off to gather together descendants of all the gods. The first kids he meets, though, are descendants of Loki--a boy named Fen and his cousin Laurie, and they've never been friends with Matt. Far from it. But though Loki fought with the bad guys in the original story, if Matt can learn to trust these two unlikely allies, maybe they can work together in this new version of the story....
And so the three of them set out, on a quest to gather certain magical items and find the rest of the god-descended teenagers they need--Odin, Fri. But it's not a walk in the park--already the forces of darkness are beginning to work against them...and, as this first book comes to a close, the stakes are getting very high indeed...
Of course, it's hard not to compare this to the Percy Jackson series, and indeed, fans of those books will welcome this series--more mythological fun and mayhem! But Loki's Wolves is somewhat different in feel. For one thing, the focus of the book is on three distinct characters right from the beginning, so there is more character-driven tension, and less immediate mythological mayhem. And here we are immersed more gradually in the struggle at hand--this first book is more a gathering of characters, setting the stage for the Real Adventures to come (although it is not without excitements).
My own response--a fine start with a great premise, and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next.
I'm happy to be a stop on the Loki's Wolves Blog Tour, in which questions are asked and answers given by the authors. My assignment was to ask about two of the god-descended teenagers-- Reyna and Ray, descendants of Frey and Freya.
He launched into explaining the myths: “The twins are Frey and Freya. In the old stories, Freya is the goddess of love and beauty. Frey is the god of weather and fertility. We need to find their descendants, who are apparently also twins.” Matt paused. “Two for one. That’ll make it easier.”
- Loki's Wolves, page 148
Me: In this first book of the series, the twins Reyna and Ray are somewhat shadowy figures--Fen calls them "Goth Ken and Goth Barbie," with good reason--they aren't exactly bubbling over with rich, nuanced demonstrations of personality. Will we get a chance to know them as individuals later in the series? Will they get to play a more central role, bringing into the story the characteristic of their ancestral deities, Freya and Frey? And will we get more insight into their particular powers?
Kelley: Yes, we definitely don't get a full picture of Ray and Reyna in the first book. They're the most wary of the descendants, unwilling to commit fully to the group and so, unwilling to reveal more of themselves. In Loki's Wolves, the other characters don't have a chance to get to know the twins so, by extension, neither does the reader. Once they become a true part of the team, we'll get to see their real selves. At the same time, they'll learn more about themselves and their powers.
Me: And why did you decide to make them Goth? I'm having trouble imaging Freya and Frey, deities of love and procreation and warmth of all sorts, as it were, as morose Goths hanging around a cemetery! We haven't been told much about their backstory--just that their dad's a (relatively) rich casino owner, and I'm wondering if there's something that we haven't been told yet….
Kelley: Goth culture is known for its emphasis on morbidity and death, but also seeks to find light and happiness in the dark parts of life. Ray and Reyna are two kids struggling to come to terms with their past and their present--their heritage as gods of light and fertility combined with lives of commercialism and cynicism (as the children of casino owners) They've discovered their affinity for magic and without the proper background regarding their heritage, they associate those powers with the dark arts and have embraced that side of themselves. Like many very young goths, they feel alienated and confused, and they're seeking to find their way.
Me: I'll look forward to finding out more about them! Thanks very much, Kelley and Melissa!
The other stops on the blog tour are:
(disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher)
"They're Mine!"
"No, they're mine! They live in My room!"
etc.
This was the conversation that ensued when it came time to pick a shelf space for the two Astronaut Academy books by Dave Roman, the second of which, Astronaut Academy Re-Entry (First Second, May 15, 2013) was read about five times each in five days by my two boys (nine and twelve).
I would have solved the problem by putting them on my own shelves, if I kept graphic novels in my bedroom. They are that lovable. They are also very funny--both the words and the pictures. And they are also very good value for your money. Not only are they eminently re-readable, but even a fast-reading adult (ie me) will take at least an hour to savor every page the first time through (I didn't let my eyes glide over any of the pictures. I didn't want to miss anything).
On one level, these books deliver sci-fi fun of a very wacky sort. The setting is, after all, Astronaut Academy, where students arrive in robot-cat like school bus in space. There are robots and other high-tech accouterments. There is also a character who is a ninja bunny, and the mysterious Senor Panda. There's the very sci-fi game of Fireball, that plays a major role in the events of Astronaut Academy, and lots lots more.
But what there also is, even more so, is characters to love. From Hakata Soy, the central protagonist, to the kids on Team Feety Pajamas (who spend most of their time in the library, ostensibly Evil, but actually not so much), to the shy, the geek, the sporty kids who make up the gloriously fascinating and diverse student body, there is someone for just about anyone to relate too and sympathize with.
And so the central story line of
Astronuat Academy Re-Entry isn't the Fireball excitement, the way Hakata makes peace with his Past, or even the defeat of the heart stealing fiendish monster from space. Nope, the central story line follows the emotional arcs of lots of kids as they navigate the world of school and friendship and parental expectations (at a wacky school in space, but still universal). And my heart goes out to them all.
(
Here at Tor, you can see nice several pages of the book, staring one of my favorite characters, Thalia Thistle, playing fireball. And some of the heart eating monster stuff).
It's not a straight-forward, linear progression of story--it's told from multiple points of view. And things don't necessarily make Sense, especially if you haven't read the first book. This might make it not a book for everyone. But who cares about sense, says I, when you are given a combination of words that read themselves out loud in your head and pictures that make you smile like crazy?
Plus dinosaur cars. I loved them in the first book, and I was getting worried that they weren't going to be in this book. But they are.
Here's
my review of book 1--Astronaut Academy: Zero Gravity.
disclaimer: review copy received very happily indeed from the publisher.
I utterly adored Tuesdays At the Castle, by Jessica Day George (2011-- my review), and so was naturally looking forward to its sequel, Wednesdays in the Tower (Bloomsbury, 2013; technically May 7, but in my local B and N right now). I found it utterly engrossing.
Castle Glower has a habit of tweaking with its layout--adding and subtracting new rooms, shifting the floor plan, making the rooms of welcomed guests much more pleasant than those of less welcome ones--and generally, though not always, these things happen on Tuesdays. Celie, the youngest princess, knows the castle better than anyone, and she's been mapping its changes through the years.
Then the castle starts to surprise even Celie. First there's the never before seen armory, full of enchantments, but that was just the beginning. One Wednesday Celie finds a new tower, and in it is an egg...and when it hatches, Celie finds herself the surrogate mother to a baby griffin...even though griffins are mythological creatures, with no place in Celie's world.
The Castle won't let her tell anyone but her oldest brother, Bran (the Castle Wizard), making things a bit difficult for her...but more distressingly, the Castle seems to be going haywire. More and more rooms are appearing, and none are leaving, with little regard for the wishes of its current inhabitants.
Celie (not unnaturally) tries to find out all she can about griffins. Gradually she finds clues that lead to a past when the folk of the castle lived side by side with griffins, riding them through the air.
But there's someone in the castle who knows more about its ancient secrets than Celie can imagine...and he's determined to keep all knowledge of griffins from her. Will she be able to keep her own griffin safe? Just what is this strangers mysterious agenda? (and what on earth is the Castle up to?!!?).
It's a more tense read than the first book, which was light-hearted fun (though with emotional twists...). This is essentially a suspenseful mystery, and though there's plenty of lovely castle-magic whimsy, and the young griffin is charming, the sense of possible impending castle-doom made it a gripping page turner.
And though it ended with the primarily mystery resolved, George added a heck of the twist at the end to make it clear that there are many more adventures to come....
Like the first, this is great stuff for the younger reader of fantasy (the eight to ten year old). It's heavy on Mythological Creatures appeal (Celie's bond with her griffin, and her wild flights on its back, are the stuff of many a young reader's wish-fulfillment), with a very likable main character, suspense without violence, and friendships without romance. I liked it lots myself and recommend it whole-heartedly.
Disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher
Hammer of Witches, by Shana Mlawski (Tu, 2013, upper middle grade/YA).
Young Baltasar has grown up in late 15th-century Spain, a time when the Spanish Inquisition was going strong, listening to the stories told him by his uncle Diego--many of which were drawn from the Jewish heritage Diego and his wife ostensibly renounced when they chose to become nominal Christians (it was either that, or living in terrible fear of discovery--Ferdinand and Isabel did not want any Jews in Spain). But of all his uncle's stories, Baltasar thrills most to those of the brave warrior Amir al-Katib, who fought for the Christian kingdoms of Europe, was betrayed by them, and ended his life fighting on the side of the Moors who were being driven from Spain. Or so Baltasar has always believed.
But that's not actually how Amir al-Katib's story ended. When a sinister oranization, known as the Hammer of Witches, dedicated to fighting witchcraft with any means deemed necessary, imprisons Baltasar, he is questioned under threat of torture about Amir. And he intensively responds with a gift for magical storytelling he didn't know he had--and raises a golem, who carries him home.
Where, of course, the nice folks (not) from the Hammer of Witches know where to find him.
Now his aunt and uncle are dead, and Baltasar is on the run. But he's not alone for long--his uncle has passed on a slim golden chain that belonged ot Amir al-Katib himself, and, much to Baltasar's wonder, it summons an Ifritah--a girl who is have spirit, half human, and full of magic. And when the Ifritah, Jinniyah, takes him to Baba Yaga for advice, Baltasar finds that a great evil is about to head west from Europe across the sea...and that he might be able to thwart it.
And so Baltasar and Jinniyah sail off with Christopher Columbus....a journey wherein the little fleet is beset by magical enemies. But Baltasar can answer each magical creature with one of his own; the real evil (obviously to the modern reader) doesn't come until land is reached, and the Columbian consequences begin.
So. It is tremendously exciting, what with magical adventures, the voyage of exploration, the fact that the Hammer of Witches has a spy embedded in the voyage, the mystery of Amir al-Katib (which plays a large part in the story), and Baltasar's own growing control of his storytelling magic. In particular, Baltasar's time spent with the Taino people, who are describe in rich detail, and who seem much saner than the Europeans, is worthwhile reading.
Just about any reader who likes excitement will appreciate the high-stakes, fast-moving story; those who are Readers to begin with will especially appreciate the strong link here between magic and storytelling. It is a fascinating take on the story of Columbus' voyage, one that respects the Taino and gives them equal agency to the Europeans. There is a strong young female character, too, to round things off gender-wise, and to my surprise it wasn't Jinnyah but someone else....
I didn't find it a perfect read, though, primarily because Baltasar is a very distant first-person narrator. He's awfully good at describing (his words made beautifully clear pictures in my mind), but not so good at sharing enough of his feelings to make me care deeply about him as an individual. And, in fact, at one point I actively disliked him--after the aforementioned girl character witnessed the rape of Taino women, it was creepy of Baltasar to kiss her uninvited, and then, a few pages later, jokingly say to her that "we both know you're dying for another kiss" (page 286).
I was also disappointed by the fact that Jinniyah, the Ifritah, doesn't end up having much of a role in the story--I kept expecting her to be responsible for some major twist in the plot, but she never took center stage, and was often shunted off onto the sidelines.
Still, there was much to enjoy, and it was refreshing to read a book whose main character not only embodies the clash of cultures in 15th century Europe between Judiasm, Christianity, and Islam, but offers an unflinching look at the horror Columbus' voyage unleashed on the native peoples he encountered.
For another perspective, here's
the Kirkus review.
Note on age: This one felt rather tween-ish to me, which is to say for readers 11 to 14. Baltasar himself is fourteen (though, I think, a rather young 14), and a few specific instance of violence, including what happened to the Taino women, pushes this beyond something I'd give to a ten-year old.
disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher
The release of Fyre, the seventh and final book of the Septimus Heap series last Tuesday, means that now is the perfect time to introduce any young readers of fantasy in your life to what I think is just about the most satisfying series of the past decade (right up there with Harry Potter and Percy Jackson).
And this is what I did--last Saturday my nine-year old started
Magyk, the first in the series (HarperCollins, 2005). Here's how I sold it to him--boy with magical abilities finds dragon egg. Here's what I didn't say--the boy doesn't know it's a dragon egg, and it doesn't hatch till book 2. But I was pretty confident that once he got started, he'd be hooked.
Indeed, he was. He read with an all-consuming emotional commitment, and I wish Angie Sage could have stopped by our house to hear the stream of exclamations, questions, excited comments, predictions, gasps, etc. coming from the comfy chair in our living room. In all sincerity, I truly do not think any author could ask for a better reaction to their book.
Less than a week later, he has almost finished the fourth book (the fact that is was spring break helped). Listening to his questions and remarks (he wanted me to stay in the same room, so as to facilitate this social aspect of his reading enjoyment) made it clear to me that my memory of the early books has gotten fuzzy, so I've started a re-read of the series myself in anticipation of Fyre.
Magyk is, in a nutshell, the story of how brave kids, with the help of useful adults, defeat a dark wizard. As the story begins, young Septimus Heap, seventh son of seventh son, born to a happy, though not wealthy, family of magic users living in the shadow of a magic filled castle. Septimus is pronounced dead by the midwife...but that very day his father finds a baby girl left outside in the snow, and little Jenna becomes the Heap families daughter. Fast forward ten years. An evil wizard, thought to be dead, but clearly not, returns to try to reclaim the castle. Jenna and the Heap family flee with the help of Marcia, the ExtraOrdinary Wizard. A boy, Boy 412, from the sinister Young Army (sort of a Soviet Youth training horror) finds himself reluctantly fleeing with them (he doesn't yet grasp that he is being saved).
Moving right along in a bald summary that doesn't do justice to the story--bad wizard wants Jenna (she is the missing princess), and sends sinister forces against the refugees. The boy from the Young Army turns out to have great magical gifts. The adults do what they can, but things go wrong. Jenna, Boy 412, and the next oldest Heap son save the day with the help of an ancient, living, dragon boat.
That's the plot in a nutshell, but what makes this book so very fun to read is the zest with which Angie Sage has packed it with
Magyk (highlighted thus in the text). Magical creatures abound, there are lots of charms and potions and just plain old fun with magic. And it is packed with characters too--although Sage wisely moves a whole chunk of Heap brothers off-stage, there are more than enough people busily engaged in fending off danger to keep things humming.
I really enjoyed it this second time through. As for my son, he thinks these books are just about the best he has ever read, and plans to book-talk them up a storm to his wide circle of reading friends on Monday. For the younger reader in particular, who still reads with the wide-eyed wonder of the not-yet-cynical, this is great stuff.
Time Tangle, by Frances Eager, was published way back in 1976, and if I had gotten hold of it back then (when I was eight) I would have loved it to pieces. Alas, as an adult reader I couldn't quite feel the love--it just didn't go
far enough with the magic of its time travel premise to make it wonderful.
Beth is a girl at a boarding school run by nuns in England, whose mother died a few months before the book begins--she is full of (mostly) repressed, and totally understandable, grief, and spends most of her time indulging in extravagant daydreams, which she narrates to herself. Her journalist father was supposed to come back to England to spend Christmas, but he can't. So Beth is going to stay with the nuns, crossing over to their side of the campus, an old manor house (unknown and exciting territory!). She doesn't mind, exactly; though she misses her father, Christmas without her mother was going to be horrible regardless.
One day Beth, wandering the cold woods outside the school, dressed up in her Elizabethan costume from the school play (which strikes me as a sensible thing to do, if you are going to wander around imagining things), and singing Greensleeves to pass the time (as one does), meets a boy named Adam. Turns out, Adam is an actual Elizabethan, who's gotten involved with the Catholic priest underground. And he shares with Elizabeth the information that a Catholic priest hidden in the manor house, and she agrees that she will be the next link in the chain of messengers, and warn him that he must not go to the next house on his itinerary, where he will be captured.
But though Adam can come and go through time (he seems to be visiting the present), Elizabeth, with exception of one vision of the Elizabethan past, cannot. And though she tries to twist the heavily painted-over Tudor rose that opens the hidden priest hole, she cannot...and the chain of warning is broken.
So its a fine story, with lots of bonus points for interesting and sympathetic nuns running a school (not something you see much of, and I've always liked a. boarding schools and b.
In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden, which is the best book about nuns ever), and Elizabeth is a girl who reminds me of me (not the dead mother part, but the narrated imaginings part), and that is just fine, and Adam is enigmatic and appealing, and the tension is great.
But the ending fizzles, and Adam doesn't get enough page time. Fifty or so more pages, with more time travelling, and I probably would like it lots more, but as it was the balance was off. The two stories-- Beth's life in the real world, and Adam's problems in the past-- seemed to be two separate pieces of bread (unobjectionable bread) with no tasty sandwich filling making them into a glorious whole.
Short answer: if you see this in a library booksale for 25 cents, go for it. If you have an imaginative and introspective book-loving girl around your house who is eight or nine years old, you could even look for it activly.
Note on ghost vs time travel: I am categorizing this as time slip rather than ghost, because Adam is still very much within his own time, objects from the past are solid, and Elizabeth at one point sees backward into the past. But I did get a sense of the author being reluctant to fully commit herself to one or the other, and this, now that I come to type it, may be the root of my dissatisfaction.
Oh yeah. You want a book that hits the sweet spot for the nine-year old mythical creature lover? This is what you are looking for:
The Menagerie, by Tui T. Sutherland and Kari Sutherland (HarperCollins, March 2013, middle grade), is your basic ordinary boy meets a family who tends mythical creatures, and finds he has a knack for baby griffin wrangling. It's your basic new kid in town finds a niche and makes friends, with a bit of family dynamic stuff thrown in. And it's your basic scary government bad enforcement types and sinister sneakers off in the background threatening everything.
And the sum of these somewhat unremarkable plot points is an adventure with a generous dose of mystery that is eminently readable and very enjoyable, especially, I think, if you are nine years old. Even more especially if you are my own nine-year old, who turned right around after reading it in one day to begin it over again, and who can't wait for the sequel.
Things I especially appreciated:
1. Great baby griffins! The main story revolves around the escape of six young siblings, and their escapades all over town, which vary depending on their personality (one ends up in the library, because books are her favorite sort of treasure, another makes a hoard for himself with the pirate coins in a toy shop, etc.).
Logan, our central character, has the remarkable ability to converse telepathically with griffins, and here he is talking to baby Flurp (her thoughts are in bold) in the library:
"
Flurp ready to write fabulous tales of grand adventure. Furp ready to be most famous author of all time! From nice warm safe cave with much fish. She clacked her beak.
Nothing to eat in here but BOOKS.
"Did you actually--?" Logan glanced through the play-house window. The floor was covered in Harry Potter books, as if Flurp had been been making a nest out of them.
Eat books?! Flurp would NEVER! Flurp would STARVE first!The griffin cub let out a tiny burp that smelled of crayons." (p 105)
Plus Logan knows about griffins because he's seen one on a Diana Wynne Jones book, which made me, DWJ fan that I am, smile!
2. The fact that Logan is African American, and that this has nothing whatsoever to do with anything that happens. It's just who he is.
3. The nice balance of description (cool creatures!) with happenings, and an equally nice balance of the funny with the tense----it felt just right to my own internal nine-year old.
4. The fact that Logan has a cat named Purrsimmon.
And, as a small but worthwhile added bonus, "menagerie" is now in my son's vocabulary.
So give this to the kid who isn't ready for
Fablehaven yet, who loves mythical creature fiction, and watch the pages turn...
One last thing regarding my own boy's experience with it--after taking it to school, and talking it up, he came home to report that at least ten kids, including ones he hadn't expected to be interested, all wanted to read it. But he was a good child, and brought it back home to his mama...
Terry Pratchett is, of course, best known for his Discworld books, but he also wrote (among other things) a three book sci fi/fantasy series for readers 9-12, about a boy named Johnny Maxwell and his friends. Johnny and the Bomb, the third book (1996), takes Johnny and co. back in time to World War II, just as their town is about to be hit by German bombs....
Johnny knows the bombs are coming, and that people will be killed because the air raid siren isn't going to off and warn them. If he can sound the alarm, he can save them...but caught in the temporal paradoxes of changing the past, and hampered more than he's helped by his companions in adventure, he might not be able to.
Johnny and his friends are a somewhat confusing bunch of mis-fits (three boys, and one girl)--they are all rather mad, in the British sense of the word. The madness that they create just by existing is compounded when they encounter the shopping cart of a bag lady, who just happens (though they don't know it) to keep time (or something very like it) in the grotty plastic bags she wheels around. When Johnny and the friend who is a girl (mostly named Kirsty though sometimes she chooses not to be) start poking at the cart (not that they really wanted to, but these things happen), it starts whisking them through time.
And eventually all five kids are back in 1941, not adding much to moral, and not, at first, realizing that if they don't do something, the bombs will kill the very people they are meeting. It does not help that one friend has decided to travel through time wearing a German uniform.
I rather think that I had read the other two books first, I would have been altogether calmer and more receptive, happy to see Johnny and all instead of confused and unconvinced by them (although not un-entertained). But I had not, and so I was. Fortunately, I was curious enough to continue on (chuckling, it must be said, quite often), and was rewarded by a cracker-jack time-travel paradox gem when Johnny must slide around the linear path of time to sound the alarm. That part was really good (or fully realized, if you want something fancier).
Short answer: read the first book first. Read this one first only if you are a. a passionate devotee of WW II juvenile fiction b. reading every time travel book for kids you can.
Bonus: interesting bit of grim humor regarding how the residents of WW II England might react to a black boy (one of Johnny's friends)
Final note: it is never explained how or why the mysterious bag lady and her shopping cart travel through time, so don't expect to be any wiser by the end of the book.
Weeding time has begun hereabouts, a time of mixed joy (I find weeding soothing) and despair (I can't weed fast enough). But regardless, I am a weeder. As well as a reader.
So of course I had to get hold of Garden Princess, by Kristin Kladstrup, the first example I have ever come across of a juvenile fantasy whose heroine, Adela, is a weeder! (Weed fantasy--the next big thing? Probably not).
Adela is a princess--plain and somewhat awkward, but royal none the less, which conflicts with her gardening (I hear you, Adela--my job conflicts with my weeding something fierce too!). And because of her love for plants, she gatecrashes a garden party to which she was not invited (though the handsome young castle gardener, and her vapidly beautiful young step-aunt both got invitations) simply because the thought of visiting the fabled garden of Lady Hortensia is irresistible.
Lady Hortensia has a way with plants. An evil, twisted, magical way...let's just say, all the beautiful people who get invited to her parties are changed by the experience...and Adela is about to see her in action! Adela's fortunate escape from the attentions of Lady Hortensia, and the brave efforts of a thief (in enchanted magpie form--he was the most interesting and entertaining character of the story), foil the evil Hortensia, and all is well.
It's a pleasant, fast read--light, fairy-tale fun. There's not much in the way of deep substance to the plot or to the various romances (which were rather rushed), and the moral--that "a beautiful person was someone who was good and kind" (p 190) is underlined repeatedly. But Adela's desire to do her own thing outside societies expectations of what a princess should be, and her growing determination to make those desires come true, are appealing.
A nice one for younger middle grade readers, who don't require their princesses to be beautiful, or their romances more than fairy-tales.
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I have more time now that school started. Less driving my daughter around in the morning or it's REALLY early--5:15 am to get to 5:45 swim practice.
Thanks for the review. I'll be doing a giveaway of this in October (without a review). I think people will like this.