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Christmas Journey. Anne Perry. 2003. 180 pages. [Source: Library]
First sentence: Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould hesitated a moment at the top of the stairs.
Premise/plot: A country-house party in December goes terribly wrong when one of the guests decides to jump off a bridge and commit suicide. The "victim" of this mystery (Gwendolen) was first the victim of a cutting insult. The other guests decide that Isobel (the woman who was 'rude') is to blame. She's to be ostracized from that day forward. But the host (Omegus Jones) and the heroine (Lady Vespasia) concoct a way to "cleanse" her socially. She'll be the one to travel to the mother's home (Gwendolen's mother) to tell her the news. If the mother travels back with her and agrees that sufficient penance has been done, then all will be well--socially.
My thoughts: This is a very odd book. It's Christmas-themed, which could be a great thing. But. It's also supposed to be a mystery. And that is where it falls short a bit. Perry's books usually have at least one or two crimes. And they tend to be DRAMATIC and big. Not subtle and dainty. I liked that this Christmas mystery didn't offer a lot of GRIT and RAGE. On the positive side, it is a very short read! But ultimately it is probably forgettable as well. © 2016 Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
The Cafe Mystery (The Whodunit Detective Agency #4) Martin Widmark. Illustrated by Helena Willis. 2003/2015. 80 pages. [Source: Library]
First Sentence: "Mmm, pastries!" said Maya. "Cakes and muffins! Yum," added Jerry. "Can you believe everything that's been happening in there?" asked Maya, gesturing toward Cafe Marzipan, Pleasant Valley's best bakery.
Premise/plot: Jerry and Maya are kid detectives with a new toy: a digital camera. And that camera will come in handy for their next case. The bakery has suffered several robberies in the past year. No one has been able to figure out who the robber is. The robber just happens to hit every time there is a large amount of cash in the cash register. (An event that isn't all that common.) Can Jerry and Maya figure out which of the employees is working with the robber...and why?
My thoughts: I like this series. I do. I am enjoying spending time in Pleasant Valley. Jerry and Maya are very good at what they do.
© 2016 Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
By:
Becky Laney,
on 8/2/2016
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The Circus Mystery (The Whodunit Detective Agency #3) Martin Widmark. Illustrated by Helena Willis. 2003/2015. 80 pages. [Source: Library]
First sentence: It was summertime in the town of Pleasant Valley. The sun had been shining brightly all day, and a gentle breeze rustled through the leaves of the trees in town.
Premise/plot: Jerry and Maya are two kids with a detective agency. A circus is coming to town. This circus has a bad reputation, however. Whatever towns the circus visits, a series of robberies and thefts occur. They have every reason to believe that their town will be no different, that the thief will rob people in the crowd. The police chief and Jerry and Maya attend both performances of the circus in order to see if they can solve the case.
My thoughts: I like this series well enough. Early chapter books are key in reading development. And who doesn't like a good series? Kids need series books; they need the predictability and the formulaic structure. I would definitely recommend the series.
© 2016 Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
The Far Side of Evil. Sylvia Engdahl. 1971/2003. Penguin. 336 pages. [Source: Library]
The wind is howling through the trees outside, a cold, hateful wind. By standing on the bunk I can just barely reach the window. It's quite dark now, and the stars are brilliant, though they seem terribly far away. They, at least, are familiar and comforting, a reminder of home. Elana, our heroine, has just graduated from the Federation Anthropological Service Academy. Her first "official" assignment has her going undercover on the youngling planet, Toris. The planet is in the "Critical Stage," and the Federation is sending dozens of agents in undercover. It's an information gathering mission, not one of intervention. The goal: blend in as much as possible with the Younglings, and transmit your observations when possible. It's dangerous because if Toris goes critical--uses nuclear weapons--then all the agents are essentially just as doomed as the younglings themselves. The only other agent Elana knows is another recent graduate. His name is Randil. He's a mess.
Toris has two "warring" governments, which is putting the planet in "Critical Stage." Elana's cover gets blown, and she's captured as a spy. The book is her report of how she become imprisoned and how she's handling the daily torture.
The premise of Far Side of Evil is simple. All civilizations--all planets--evolve through a critical stage, a stage where they choose to use their technology for weapons--nuclear warfare--or they choose to use their technology to go to the stars, to explore and colonize space.
Did I like The Far Side of Evil? Not really. Why? That's a good question. Was it because the chapters were way too long? Perhaps. Was it because it lacked the charm of The Enchantress From the Stars? Perhaps. I will say that Enchantress from the Stars has an almost fairy-tale feel to it in places. It reads like a fantasy book. Was it Randil's fault? Probably. He certainly proves irritating and infuriating. But it wasn't his fault alone. I also found Elana's narration to be less than ideal. I found her to be smug, arrogant, condescending, and repetitive. Why was Elana so likeable in Enchantress from the Stars and so unlikeable in Far Side of Evil? I think in the first book she was more vulnerable, and less confident in her abilities. She wasn't alone. She was acting under the advice of other older-and-wiser Federation agents, including her father. Both books are premise-driven to a certain extent; but Far Side of Evil is only premise-driven, and Enchantress from the Stars is plot-driven
and character-driven too.
© 2015 Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
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on 12/5/2014
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The Tale of Despereaux. Kate DiCamillo. 2003. Candlewick Press. 272 pages. [Source: Bought]
There are so few rereads left in the year, yet, I couldn't miss rereading Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux. (I first reviewed this one in
September 2007). I've also made a point of rereading
Because of Winn Dixie and
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.
I tend to like talking-mice books. I tend to like animal fantasy when it's well done. And in The Tale of Despereaux it is very well done. DiCamillo is a GREAT author. She is. She has a way with words, with phrasing things just so that happens to appeal to me. She's a good, solid storyteller. Her characters are always unique and memorable. That is definitely the case with The Tale of Despereaux.
Do you have a favorite Kate DiCamillo book?
Quotes:
“Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light.”
“There are those hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman. Such was the fate of Chiaroscuro. His heart was broken. Picking up the spoon and placing it on his head, speaking of revenge, these things helped him to put his heart together again. But it was, alas, put together wrong.”
“Reader, you must know that an interesting fate (sometimes involving rats, sometimes not) awaits almost everyone, mouse or man, who does not conform.”
“Once upon a time," he said out loud to the darkness. He said these words because they were the best, the most powerful words that he knew and just the saying of them comforted him.”
“Despereaux looked at his father, at his grey-streaked fur and trembling whiskers and his front paws clasped together in front of his heart, and he felt suddenly as if his own heart would break in two. His father looked so small, so sad.
"Forgive me," said Lester again.
Forgiveness, reader, is, I think, something very much like hope and love - a powerful, wonderful thing.
And a ridiculous thing, too.
Isn't it ridiculous, after all, to think that a son could forgive his father for beating the drum that sent him to his death? Isn't it ridiculous to think that a mouse ever could forgive anyone for such perfidy?
But still, here are the words Despereaux Tilling spoke to his father. He said, "I forgive you, Pa."
And he said those words because he sensed it was the only way to save his own heart, to stop it from breaking in two. Despereaux, reader, spoke those words to save himself.”
© 2014 Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
I liked Alice, I Think by Susan Juby very much, but I'm not sure what the story is here. This may be one of those books you have to be zenny about and just experience.
Alice is the offspring of crunchy parents who homeschooled her because on her first day of traditional first grade (she didn't attend kindergarten), she showed up dressed as a character from The Hobbit. Things didn't go well for her. One could say that learning to read early leads to no good.
I was never a hundred percent sure why Alice was seeing a therapist, unless it had something to do with poor socialization because she was homeschooled. It was probably one of her parents' ideas. Alice heads out to regular school at fifteen, inspired by her younger brother who has always attended school. He may have been too bright for their parents and had some instinctual knowledge that you just don't dress up in costumes for school. Alice says outright that she has no problem with playing favorites. She definitely prefers her brother to her mother and father.
Oh, and Alice aspires to be a cultural critic.That is a fantastic aspect of the book.
Juby describes Alice, I Think as a Teen/Adult book, and I think that's very apt. There are aspects of this book that adults are going to find more entertaining than I think teens will. The section on the people holding some kind of memorial to the late, lamented Princess of Wales, for instance, is probably far more meaningful to adults than the younger than seventeen-year-olds who don't remember the world-wide mourning at her death. As much as I liked the cultural critic business, that might be for your more sophisticated teen readers, too.
Some of you may remember that my first Juby book was Home to Woefield, definitely an adult novel published in 2010. Next I read her teen book Getting the Girl, published in 2008. I thought the main character was wonderful, "like a younger, less raunchy, undamaged Seth from Home to Woefield." Alice, I Think was published in 2003, and I think the young girl in the 2010 Woefield might be a variation on her.
Interesting to read so much of an author's work and see her world.
Alice, I Think has a sequel. In addition, a one-season TV series was made in Canada. Yes, I may try to get hold of it. If I watch it, you can be sure I'll let you know.
Oh, my gosh. How could I have waited so long to read
Persepolis by
Marjane Satrapi? How soon can I get hold of the second volume?
I probably would have been even more blown away by this memoir of living through the fall of the Shah of Iran, the fundamentalist takeover of that country, and its war with Iraq if I hadn't read
Reading Lolita in Tehran, which deals with some of the same period but from an adult's experience. What's amazing in both cases is the way people living under those conditions tried to maintain normality, continuing with their social gatherings in secret, collecting western pop culture trinkets. Oh, my gosh.
No wonder I see this book on my local schools' summer reading lists so often. But this isn't instructive, you-ought-to-learn-about-this-culture stuff. This is simply little Marjane's life, and she has quite a character. She's a very little revolutionary at first, but when the revolution leads to a fundamentalist takeover, she doesn't buckle under to that.
I wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did. Very pleased. Maybe a gift for my brother-in-law, who likes history but probably has never read a graphic novel.
My only complaint--the print seemed small at first. But once I was into the book, I no longer noticed.
The Rose of York. Love & War. Sandra Worth. 2003. End Table Books. 340 pages.
The messenger tore through the night. The desolate, snowy streets of London posed little danger in the comforting dark, but at London Bridge he reined in his nervous mount. I have mixed feelings on this first volume in Sandra Worth's Rose of York trilogy. First, you should know that I love this period in history. I have read half-a-dozen or so novels set during this time period. Some treat Richard III sympathetically, others not so much. Though Shakespeare, in my opinion, treats him the worst of all that I've read. I do like Richard III. I do like books who treat him sympathetically. Which is one reason this one was an enjoyable read. But does it take Richard III to the other extreme? Is he too perfect? too saintly? too heroic? I'm not sure. Is the romance between Anne and Richard too much of a fairy tale? I don't know.
Was Love and War an easy read for me because I am so familiar with the story? Or has Worth just simplified the story for her audience? Would others find it confusing and complex? I'm not sure. The truth is there are dozens of players in this royal drama. And the story itself is detailed and quite complex. It didn't feel that way in Love and War, at least not to me. It seems the characters have been simplified. Each falls quickly into either being "good" or "bad."
The writing was simple, a bit rushed in places, but overall simple and straightforward.
Is it fair to compare this one to Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman? True, not every reader would find Sunne in Splendour one of the best, best historical novels ever. True, some might be intimidated by a 900 page novel. Love & War, unlike Sunne in Splendour, doesn't try to tell a comprehensive, complex story. It is primarily a novel solely focused on romance--the romance between Richard and Anne. Yes, Richard's relationship with his brother, the King, and his relationship with Anne's father, "the Kingmaker," enter into it. As does his relationship with his other brother, George. But mainly as complications or obstacles to his one true love. Sunne in Splendour, on the other hand, really is about the time period, the politics, the society, the royal family and the nobility, the drama and chaos of war and love and loss and betrayal.
Read Love & War
- If you like historical fiction with a strong emphasis on romance
- If you like simple, sweet historical romances
- If you are interested in Richard III and this time period (late fifteenth century)
And this is not to be missed:
© 2012 Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
Signs and Wonders: A Harmony Novel. Philip Gulley. 2003. HarperCollins. 224 pages.
The summer Barbara Gardner turned sixteen, she was crowned the Tenderloid Queen by the Lawrence County Pork Producers.While I enjoyed the first Harmony book very much, I haven't quite been able to appreciate the later books in the series. (The Christmas novella was nice, however.) Signs and Wonders, the fourth book, is the biggest disappointment to me yet. I am finding things that made me laugh out loud in the first book--the 'observations' about how church meetings go--are making me cringe now. Because what I took for light fun in the first book--and even, to a certain degree, in the second book, I now feel is over-the-top mocking. In a condescending, mean-spirited way. To laugh with characters that are quirky are one thing--to make them be 'the joke' five hundred thousand times in a row--is another. The sentimentality lessons which I found more charming than annoying in the first book are now much too much for me to endure. Because I now feel he is pushing an agenda, that he has a message, and if you don't agree with him, well, you'll end up being the next big joke.
I don't know if I'll continue on with the series or not.
© 2011 Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
Ollie. Olivier Dunrea. 2003/2007. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 16 pages.
This is Ollie.Ollie is waiting.He won't come out.Gossie and Gertie have been waiting for weeks for Ollie to come out.Gossie and Gertie are impatient. They are tired of waiting for Ollie to hatch out of his shell. Ollie keeps protesting that he won't come out, he won't come out, he won't come out. And these two friends keep pleading with Ollie again and again. Will this egg ever hatch? He may when he's ready--in his own time. Perhaps after the two tell him NOT to come out!
While Ollie isn't my favorite board book by Olivier Dunrea, it is still a fun read! There are other Ollie adventures, I believe, that I haven't had the opportunity to read: Ollie the Stomper, Ollie's Halloween, Merry Christmas, Ollie, Ollie's Easter Eggs, etc.
© 2011 Becky Laney of
Young Readers
The Wee Free Men. Terry Pratchett. 2003. HarperCollins. 400 pages.
Some things start before other things. In The Wee Free Men, we meet Tiffany Aching, a young girl, who's just discovered that she's a witch. She can see things as they really are. When her younger brother--her pesky brother--is stolen, supposedly by a fairy queen who loves children, Tiffany is determined to rescue him no matter what. With her new friends--the feegles--they face adventure, danger, and temptation.
I think I knew it was love from the very first page. I just fell in love with the first few chapters of The Wee Free Men. I loved Miss Tick. I loved our young heroine, Tiffany Aching. Even before the introduction of Nac Mac Feegle. Before we meet Rob Anybody. Before we meet No'-as-Big-As-Medium-Sized-Jock-But-Bigger-Than-Wee-Jock-Jock. Before the journey to fairy land. Though of course, my love just grew as the novel progressed.
I loved the writing. I mean I LOVED the writing. It was so much fun to read this one! There were so many funny moments.
"Sometimes it's so hard to find half a mind when you need one." (33)
"I am a teacher as well as a witch," said Miss Tick, adjusting her hat carefully. "Therefore I make lists. I make assessments. I write things down in a neat, firm hand with pens of two colors." (39)
At some point Ratbag the cat pushed open the door and jumped onto the bed. He was big to start with, but Ratbag flowed. He was so fat that, on any reasonably flat surface, he gradually spread out in a great puddle of fur. He hated Tiffany but would never let personal feelings get in the way of a warm place to sleep. (41)
You could read the Nac Mac Feegle like a book. And it would be a big simple book with pictures of Spot the Dog and a Big Red Ball and one or two short sentences on each page. (150)
I would definitely recommend this one! It is a great fantasy!
© Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
The First Part Last. Angela Johnson. 2003. Simon & Schuster. 144 pages.
My mom says that I didn't sleep through the night until I was eight years old. It didn't make any difference to her 'cause she was up too, listening to the city.
Bobby never planned on having a baby. But on his sixteenth birthday, his girlfriend, Nia, surprises him with the news. He's going to be a father. The story is revealed in alternating chapters of then and now. In the 'now' sections, readers see Bobby in the early days of fatherhood. They see him taking care of his newborn daughter. They see him scared and exhausted, but they also see him as loving. The 'then' sections reveal to readers--slowly--how Feather, his daughter, came to be solely in his care.
I loved this one! I did! Earlier in the year I read several of Angela Johnson's novels. I read Heaven and Sweet, Hereafter. I read Bird and Looking for Red. I've enjoyed all of her books that I've read. And I would definitely recommend this author, I love the way she writes.
But I figure if the world were really right, humans would live life backward and do the first part last. They'd be knowing in the beginning and innocent in the end. Then everybody could end their life on their momma or daddy's stomach in a warm room, waiting for the soft morning light. (4)
© Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! Mo Willems. 2003. Hyperion. 40 pages.
Hi! I'm the bus driver. Listen, I've got to leave for a little while, so can you watch things for me until I get back? Thanks. Oh, and remember: Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
Pigeon is the star of this one. Pigeon is one stubborn bird. Opinionated too. He is willing to beg, plead, whine, and more....all in one valiant attempt to do something he has no business doing. Will his reasoning make you and your little one giggle? Maybe!
I thought this one was fun. I liked it well enough. But I don't love it the same way as I love Mo Willems' other books--especially his Knuffle Bunny ones and the Elephant and Piggie ones.
© Becky Laney of Young Readers
Olive's Ocean. Kevin Henkes. 2003. HarperCollins. 224 pages.
"Are you Martha Boyle?"
Martha nodded.
"You don't know me," said the woman at the door. "Olive Barstow was my daughter. I was her mother."
Who was Olive? That was a question difficult to answer in life, and it becomes even more difficult in death. At least for Martha, the heroine of Kevin Henkes' Olive's Ocean. So who was she? She was a classmate of Martha's. But. She was invisible. No one paid any attention to her at all. Well, except for a few who picked on her now and then. She wasn't worth anyone's time or notice. A nobody. What happened to Olive? She was hit by a car while riding her bicycle.
Martha was surprised to find Mrs. Barstow at the door. She comes bearing a page from Olive's journal. It seems that while Martha didn't notice Olive all that much, Olive noticed Martha. She wrote, "I hope I get to know Martha Boyle next year (or this summer). I hope that we can be friends. That is my biggest hope. She is the nicest person in my whole entire class." Of course, the journal entry says much more than that. It shows Martha that Olive was a real person with hopes and dreams and fears, a person who in many ways is just like her.
This note changes Martha. It changes how she sees herself in a way. It makes her a bit more introspective and thoughtful. As Martha prepares to go on her family vacation to the ocean, many things are on her mind. Can she find peace by the ocean? by spending time with her grandmother? by spending time with the cute boy next door?
It's a summer of change for Martha. No doubt about that!
I'm not a big fan of the cover. I think it's taken me this many years to read it--despite it being a Newbery Honor book--because the cover just didn't do much for me. I do think the book is worth reading by the way!
© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793. By Jim Murpy. 2003. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 176 pages.
Saturday, August 3, 1793. The sun came up, as it had every day since the end of May, bright, hot, and unrelenting.
An American Plague is such a fascinating read! I'd definitely recommend this one to skeptics who think nonfiction has to be boring. To those who think nonfiction couldn't possibly be as well-written, as compelling as fiction. This one is definitely both.
The book tells the story of a town crippled by plague, by yellow fever. The city is Philadelphia. And since Philadelphia was the capital of the time, the government was essentially shut down the weeks and months the plague spread its terror. Not everyone in an official position fled the city. Not everyone who had prestige and wealth fled the city. But many did. Who was left to run the city? Who was there to tend the sick? Who was there to bury the dead? Who kept the city going? Read and see for yourself in Jim Murphy's An American Plague.
Did you notice all the award love? This one was a finalist in the National Book Awards, a Newbery Honor, and the winner of the Robert F. Sibert Award.
© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
By: Elizabeth,
on 8/6/2009
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I’ve been thinking a lot about historical fiction, because I’ve recently read two books set in 2003.
I said before (though I’m not sure if I explained it well) that the intentional dated-ness is one of the things that really worked for me in SUNRISE OVER FALLUJAH: we know, if not “the end” to that story, more than the characters do. Walter Dean Myers doesn’t have to show us Birdie learning that there are no WMDs, because we know; it makes his belief more poignant.
(And actually, this makes me think that a very powerful story could be written that goes farther in this direction, and doesn’t have the characters experience the kind of disillusionment that Birdie does undergo in that story. This would really exploit the asymmetry of knowledge between the characters and the readers. Anyone have a good example of a story like this — doesn’t have to be about Iraq?)
More recently (by which I mean yesterday), I read Peter Cameron’s SOMEDAY THIS PAIN WILL BE USEFUL TO YOU. Emily and I have talked a few times about books set in New York, about which we’re bound to have strong opinions one way or the other; this one rang true to me. Partly that’s because, while it’s set in a far wealthier slice of New York than I usually intersect with (and an eminently parodiable one at that), it just happened to hit the details of my own haunts. This passage made me sit up and cheer:
I wouldn’t become part of the evil empire that is NYU if you paid me. (NYU has single-handedly ruined most of the Village, including the dog run in Washington Square: they built this huge building that casts its shadow over the park, so that areas of the dog run are perpetually in shade.)
I went to NYU, and hated it (great profs; lousy place), and they have ruined big chunks of my neighborhood, and they are an evil empire. Sing it, Cameron.
But besides my own personal joy at seeing my enmity printed in bestselling book form, what I think worked about Cameron’s portrayal of New York was its specificity. When he described the protagonist’s feelings about a specific intersection I’ve walked by hundreds of times (LaGuardia and Houston), I couldn’t remember the details he described from my own wanderings, and I lacked the same associations this character had, but I got it. Not just because the narration was describing the city, but because the way this character described the city made me understand who he was. His character was bound up in it being precisely downtown New York in 2003, and vice-versa. That’s why it felt like New York, not like name-dropping New York.
I can’t get behind this mode of storytelling — this retelling of our own recent past — unreservedly: I saw, for example, that David Levithan’s new book is set on and after 9/11, and I cringed. I’ve had enough of that, thank you.
But in general, I’m intrigued by setting YA books so distinctly in a time we’ve just been through. Compare it to, say, Sarah Dessen’s studied timelessness: her characters are barely digital (keep in mind, I haven’t read her two most recent). I feel like a lot of YA authors are living out their own adolescences in their books, or some warp of their adolescence with their lives now. But contemporary teenagers’ lives aren’t necessarily the intersection of universal teenage angst plus, say, cell phones the way a thirty-something author might use them.* Like, how does it change teenage dating that everyone has a cell? I was extraordinarily privileged to have my own phone line in high school, and let me tell you, my high school dating life was different because of it.
My point is, there’s something else being portrayed in books like Dessen’s, that’s sold like it’s some universal adolescence, but it isn’t (and I’m sorry to always use Dessen as my punching bag, because I love her books, but they are also to me the best representatives of a category of book I can’t quite wrap my head around, or understand why I enjoy so deeply). The “timelessness” is really an experience that never quite existed for anyone: it’s, perhaps, what teenagers living in the ’80s would’ve been like in an altered reality that made pop culture more like today’s (or more cynically — especially since many of the lead characters and love interests in these books are more emotionally mature than half the adults I know — it’s what Gen X women, not just the YA authors but the growing number of adult women YA readers like me, project backwards to reimagine adolescence). And I wonder if the girls who are attracted to Dessen’s books are exactly the girls who are most inclined to try to fit their lives into some idea of what universal girlhood looks like, if that’s part of their appeal.
I’m not getting anywhere thinking more about this… opinions?
* And because I am, to my great surprise, an aspiring demographer, I will tell you that this phenomenon — where the experience of being a particular age at a particular time is something much more specific than just the effects of the age (universalized to any time) plus the effects of the time (for people of any age) — is called a cohort effect. UnderageReading: puzzle over book, name-drop tv show from fifteen years hence, snark, define jargon, call it a day.
Posted in A New York City childhood, Cameron, Peter, Dessen, Sarah, Levithan, David, Myers, Walter Dean, On Genre, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You, Sunrise Over Fallujah
Hughes, Shirley. 2003. Ella's Big Chance: A Jazz Age Cinderella.
Ella's Big Chance doesn't have much to do with jazz itself--though the illustrations clearly show the styles to be from the jazz age of fashion--but it does have everything to do with Cinderella. And with Valentine's Day less than twenty-four hours away, it is appropriate to review it now. There were things that I enjoyed about Ella's Big Chance. Things that disappointed me. And things that surprised me. I mean really surprised me about the book, the story. Things I'd not seen done with the story...ever. So it was refreshing in a way. I loved the clothes, the fashion. Ella works as a seamstress; making clothes is how she slaves away her time. And for the most part, she doesn't have the fun-and-glory of wearing the aforementioned garments. Her life is drab...except for one person, one friend in particular...a character named Buttons. You'll have to read this one for yourself to see if it's your style or if you prefer a more traditional take on Cinderella.
© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
Reeve, Philip. 2003. Mortal Engines. HarperCollins. 310 pages.
It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea. In happier times, London would never have bothered with such feeble prey. The great Traction City had once spent its days hunting far bigger towns than this, ranging north as far as the edge of the Ice Wastes and south to the shores of the Mediterranean. But lately prey of any kind had started to grow scarce, and some of the larger cities had begun to look hungrily at London. For ten years now it had been hiding from them, skulking in a damp, mountainous western district that the Guild of Historians said had once been the island of Britain. For ten years it had eaten nothing but tiny farming towns and static settlements in those wet hills. Now, at last, the Lord Mayor had decided that the time was right to take his city back over the land bridge into the Great Hunting Ground.
I don't know about you, but this one had me hooked from the beginning. In this fun science fiction series, it's a town-eat-town world ruled by municipal Darwinism. London is a city on the go, on the move. And for better or worse, Tom is along for the ride.
Tom Natsworthy is an apprentice. True, he's just a third apprentice...and an orphan at that. But he's as content as a boy can be under the circumstances. But when Tom witnesses something he shouldn't--no matter that he'd just saved Mr. Valentine's life--his new life of danger and adventure is off to a brutal start. Tom's new companion--the young girl who got him into this mess of an adventure is Hester Shaw, a flawed and scarred character if ever there was one. But this encounter leaves an unintended impression on another teenager as well...a Miss Katherine Valentine.
All three teens will in one way or another impact the world, save it even. I won't go into all the ins and outs of the plots--the different factions the world is broken into, the danger that Medusa poses to the world, the need for a hero or two to risk it all.
The world Reeve has created is an interesting one. One that you may enjoy reading about--I know I did--but that you'd never want to live in yourself. It's a fast-paced, sci-fi adventure with danger and mystery and the slightest smidgen of romance.
© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
By: Ben Zimmer,
on 12/6/2007
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When we think about new additions to the English lexicon such as locavore or tase (or other candidates for the New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year), it’s easy to forget that some of our most common vocabulary items were once awkward newcomers, like transfer students desperately trying to fit in with the other kids in class. A good reminder of that is John Ayto’s A Century of New Words. Looking through this “chronology of words that shaped our age,” one is struck again and again how so many of our old lexical friends are really not so old after all. Have we really only been talking about plastics since 1909, when Leo Baekeland invented bakelite? And who would have guessed the T-shirt has only been around since 1920, and the zipper since 1925? All of these words must have sounded downright peculiar when they first came on the scene, and yet now they’re unremarkable elements of the linguistic landscape.
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By: Ben Zimmer,
on 10/25/2007
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Lost in the hubbub about the new words and disappearing hyphens in the latest edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is a more subtle type of editorial revision. The Shorter, as a dictionary built on historical principles, provides information about the age of words and their main senses. The date range of earliest known use is noted in each entry by E (early), M (mid), or L (late) plus a century number: thus “M18″ means a word was first recorded in the mid-18th century. This style of dating is admittedly approximate, but giving the exact year of a word’s first recorded use would lend a false sense of precision. We very rarely can determine the first “baptismal” usage of a word with any confidence. But even with dates given by rough century divisions, the editors of the Shorter have been able to revise the dating of nearly 4,500 words and senses based on discoveries of earlier recorded uses, known as “antedatings” in the dictionary world. Much of this new antedating information is derived from the ongoing work done for the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Since I dabble in what my colleague Erin McKean recently called “the competitive sport of antedating,” I thought I’d share a discovery of mine that made it into the new edition of the Shorter.
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never read love and war. might read it one day