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Summer reading - had me a blast

 

Man, I do love talking about books on the radio. Last week, the Marc Steiner Show needed a librarian for a segment about what kids are reading this summer, and I was lucky enough to be in the supply chain for that request.

I had never been to the WEAA studio at Morgan State University, and it was spacious, bright, and airy. Plus, it was extremely wild to conduct a conversation with That Voice. Marc has been on Baltimore radio for ever - he is smart, friendly, and uncompromising, and I've tuned in to his wave a thousand times I'll bet.

Enoch Pratt librarian Jessica Brown and I tag-teamed Marc with some great books we'd brought for the occasion. It was a great dynamic - Jessica and I propped each other up, collaborated, illuminated more than one side of some of the books discussed, and were mutually stumped when Marc brought up a book that sounds like a political parable about Jerusalem's West Bank.

Here's the audio of our talk:

Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn - review

I am violating my own rule here. My rule is I don't review books by people I know well enough to hug.

I know Mary Hahn well enough to hug, and to kiss on the cheek. Both of which things I did last time I saw her, the day after I finished reading this book. I think you would, too.

Mary's an old friend of my parents - I think her first husband and my dad went to college together? Maybe mom was a bridesmaid? She and my mother were pregnant with their first children at the same time, and compared notes. Some time after those girls (one of them me) were born, she and my parents more or less lost touch.

Mary started working as a school librarian, and in the mid-1970's started writing novels for children. Mysteries. Ghost stories. And though most of these stories stay well within the range of "comfortably spooky" - excellent choices for middle-grade readers who crave just enough chill to keep them turning pages, but not enough to keep them up at night - that's still thirty-some years' worth of haunted houses and restless spirits, guilt, revenge, and loss.

And now we know why.

Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet - review, plus bonus Battle of the Books prediction

Clem was born premature, when his pregnant mother was startled by a heartbroken Nazi pilot shooting her chimney to pieces at the end of World War II in rural Norfolk, England.

Using this birth as a pivot point, Mal Peet tells us the story of Clem's family from the time his grandmother was a girl to nearly the present day. We see the twentieth century work its changes on this family, as wars take men away and bring them back, social movements carry Clem's family out of their indentured hovel and into estate housing and allow Clem to attend an exclusive school, and romantic love finds a foothold.

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys - review, plus Battle of the Books prediction

 

We are well shut of the twentieth century, I think. That was the first thing that crossed my mind as I closed Between Shades of Gray at about 1:30 in the morning last night. Good god. This is historical fiction that grabs you by the throat.

Where are we? We are in Lithuania in June of 1941. Stalin has annexed the country and part of his strategy for integrating it seamlessly into the Soviet Union is to round up anyone who might object and send them to Siberia. 

Who are we? Fifteen-year-old Lina, upper middle class, a gifted artist, with a ten-year-old brother and a beautiful mother. Papa, a university administrator, has already disappeared when soldiers pound on the door and throw Lina's family into a truck.

Chime by Franny Billingsley - review, plus Battle of the Books prediction

 

What is happening to 17-year-old Briony Larkin and the miserable fenside village of Swampsea? Briony is beautiful and intelligent, neglected by her father after the death of her beloved stepmother. Possessed of a supernatural gift that allows her to see and converse with the nature spirits that surround her village, before she died, her stepmother commanded Briony to avoid the swamp where these spirits live lest something terrible happen.

To make an already joyless life considerably worse, Briony is responsible for her difficult twin sister Rose, who, due to a blow to the head when the girls were seven, exhibits symptoms and behaviors similar to those associated with autism spectrum disorder.

Then a handsome boy comes to the village, and with him progress: the swamp is to be drained and Swampsea to become the terminus of a London rail line. As Swampsea struggles to - belately - join the twentieth century, Briony struggles with new roles that she both fears and desires. I'm always looking for neat coming-of-age metaphors, and the advent of the modern age is a good one. Will Briony allow herself to fall in love? Will she learn to control her power? Will she figure out the deceptions that have been perpetrated upon her, leaving her full of frustrated, self-abasing rage? 

Reading on the radio: Newbery thoughts

Oy, the book awards. Not the Nerdies, which are voted on by you the public; nor the Cybils, which have open nominations and then two panels of book bloggers as judges; and not the Maryland Black Eyed Susan Awards (nominated by school librarians, voted on by students), the Eisners, the National Book Award or the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, which I sure wish we had in the U.S.

No, I'm talking about the ALA's annual awards: the Caldecott, the Printz, and especially the Newbery.

The Cheshire Cheese Cat by Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright, illustrated by Barry Moser - guest review by Zhou, bonus rant by me

 

It's been a very Dickensy week here at Ye Olde Crumbling House of Bookes. Not Dickensian, thank goodness - we've all been getting three square meals and wearing actual shoes most of the time. Admittedly, you might catch my children looking doe-eyed and pathetic when asking for a fourth bowl of cereal (four bowls the other morning! I might as well serve it in a trough!). And if you've been following the other blog to which I contribute, you might detect a scent of Scrooge in our posts about drinking one's way through the holidays.

But, you know, I don't hate Dickens. No, nope, I don't. I hate fake Cockney accents, Barbie(™) in A Christmas Carol, I hate animatronic carolers and a hell of a lot of things that are inspired by Dickens, but I will give the man his due. Although a run like this past week is pushing it:  

 

In Defense of the Realm by Sanjay Deshpande, illustrated by Lalit Kumar Sharma - review

 

The Akkadians of Central Iraq, hungry for new lands to conquer, have set sail for the great cities of Sind, in what is now southern Pakistan. Prince Meluha and his teacher Chandrayaan are out hunting when the invaders launch their assault upon Meluha’s city, and so it becomes the handsome (and quite often shirtless - hell, everyone's shirtless in this thing!) prince’s responsibility to travel to the other Indus Valley cities and rally their rulers to stand together against the hostile armies of Akkadia.

 

The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler - review

I spent the weekend without Internet access. Yup. No service where we were staying, no bars on the phone, and a 3G indicator that winked in and out when the wind blew through the pines.

As it happens, I needed to get ahold of someone, and so I was a little infuriated by this lack of connectivity. But I was also reading The Future of Us, a sort of post-dated YA sci-fi novel set in 1996, so it was kind of apropos.

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos - review

 

I made it to page 12 of Dead End in Norvelt before I was giggling so loudly that my family made me stop and read aloud to them. You may not get that far.

Jack Gantos writes two kinds of books: good books and great books. (Also Love Curse of the Rumbaughs, which might be either, but which is so spectacularly weird that it's hard to tell.) Dead End in Norvelt is one of the great ones, for sure. It concerns an eleven-year-old boy named Jack Gantos who lives in a New Deal planned community in Western PA in 1962. He is a kid who likes "history or real-life adventure books, mostly," a mostly-good boy with frequent nosebleeds, an active imagination, and a knack for getting blamed for stuff that is not entirely his fault.

Bird in a Box by Andrea Davis Pinkney - review

 

 

Andrea Davis Pinkney is well known for her biographical picture books, biographies, and historical fiction. She does terrific research, mining family as well as archival sources so that her books assemble themselves around the reader like comfortable clothes. When she writes about Duke Ellington, you can tell that she was listening to Live at the Blue Note the whole time.

Bird in a Box is a more purely novelish novel - although Joe Louis's 1937 World Championship boxing match provides a backdrop and a connection point for the novel's characters, the book is not about the fight.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Graphic Novel, Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, adapted by Tony Lee, illustrated by Cliff Richards - review

How many trends can you cash in on with one slender book? I mean - sure, nobody'd much heard of Quirk Books before Seth Grahame-Smith audaciously armed Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy with samurai swords and rifles, and now the indie publisher is huge, able to make distribution deals with whomever they want, so who can blame 'em for trotting out as many sequels, t-shirts and ancillary works as they can? Heck, I'm surprised they haven't put out a series of branded Easy Readers.

So it is with perverse pleasure that I announce that my cynical preconceptions about this graphic novel adaptation of a mashup classic were WRONGGGG. WRONNNGG like the clock that bongs out the time in the Hotel Denouement. WRONNGGG like Bella and Edward. Like Bruce Willis and Nancy Botwin in Red (god, that actress will kiss anybody, won't she?). WRONGGG:

 

The Night Owls by the Timony Twins - review

 

You know, there is so much right with this book, I'm just going to cut to bullet points.

• Single-page comics that work separately but legitimately hang together as a book-length arc. No, legitimately. I'm serious. Like a season of really good TV. And, like a season of really good TV, there are mini-arcs and single-pagers interspersed between and nested within the larger arcs. Comic books have always done this, but not all comic books have done it this well.

• The mashup of the supernatural and the Roaring Twenties is fun. Al Capone goes up against a guy with an enchanted lead pipe. A chorine in a Marx Brothers show is haunted by her dead husband. The Pied Piper of Hamlin is gigging at the Cotton Club (making him the Pied Piper of Harlem?).

Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty by G. Neri, illustrated by Randy DuBurke - review

Yummy looks at you from the cover of this book and you can't help but stare back. His glare is impenetrable, challenging, blank, hostile. The coldest stare you've ever seen.

Yummy's eleven, and he was a real person, and that cover picture is a faithful reproduction of his mug shot, the only known photo of him. It's almost impossible, meeting that gaze, not to want to break it, not to want to find something that is not hard, not injured, behind those eyes. No eleven-year-old should seriously look like that. He ought to be playing, with that look.

The ink garden of Brother Theophane by C.M. Millen, illustrated by Andrea Wisnewski - review

What do you like best about illuminated manuscripts? Do you like following the twiny knotted ornament in the borders, challenging your eye to discover whether it's all one strand? Do you enjoy identifying the flowers and plants, so precisely rendered that botanists have used medieval manuscripts as evidence for geographic occurence? Do you glimpse the freezing monks in their freezing sweatshops, laboriously copying out texts just as if they were handstitching counterfeit Fendi handbags?

Or is it that the pages of 500-year-old manuscripts, so tightly closed for so long that they have forgotten light, still glow with color and life?

Goldsmith's Daughter by Tanya Landman - review

Here's one for my antipodean girlcrush author Karen Healey, who wrote the excellent Guardian of the Dead (reviewed on Pink Me a couple months ago). Karen is always complaining that I find YA books and talk 'em up too well, and she is running out of book money. This is not criticism that I am too broken up about - push the sheep out of your way and go to the library!

So, for Karen, a book that I do not especially recommend:

Itacate is a teenage Aztec girl in the splendid city of Tenochtitlan, the daughter of a goldsmith, raised by him and by a nurse since the death of her mother. When we meet her, she is miserably navigating the inflexible rules, ironclad beliefs, and harsh punishments of Aztec society, at odds with the future decreed her by the circumstances of her birth and gender. She's terrible at weaving and making tortillas and wants to be a craftsman like her father.

Then the conquistadors show up, and everything is tossed into a cocked hat. As far as plot disruptors go, the arrival of conquistadors is right up there. Itacate's father, whose skills are waning, is called upon to provide more and more gold to appease the vicious and brutal Europeans, and Itacate must masquerade as a boy so that she may fill in for him. This is a dreadful transgression in Aztec terms, but gives the author the chance to place Itacate into situations she would not ordinarily witness.

There is a lot to like in this book. Ms. Landman skilfully works a luxury of detail into the story. All five senses are engaged by descriptions of the crowded marketplace, the floating fields, the smelly conquistadors and meticulously-groomed Aztec nobles, the gold and turquoise treasures - even the fighting and the food are depicted in vivid language. It is difficult, however, to shake one's distaste for Itacate's love life.

It goes like this: before the arrival of the conquistadors, who will eventually destroy her city, killing everyone she knows, Itacate has a vision of a blonde and blue-eyed youth. And what do you know, she meets this curly-haired young man on the very day that the bad guys march into town. His name is Francisco, and before he became a soldier in service to the Spanish crown, he was a goldsmith like herself. Itacate and Francisco get to know each other while creating a big gold Virgin Mary. He confesses that he despises his countrymen for their greed and brutality. He alone of all the soldiers eschews raping the locals, and he even bathes. He's a good Nazi.

One of the nice things about this book is that the Aztecs are depicted as living in close proximity to their spiritual beliefs, yet are not depicted as ignorant superstitious yokels, even as Itacate begins to examine her faith. In this context, Itacate's vision seems to lend the Spanish conquest a predestined quality. I suppose it is a difficult trick when writing historical fiction to present known events with any element of novelty or surprise. But the mystical quality of a vision is I think a bad choice - there is an implied authority that seems to excuse the Spanish just a little.

In addition, Itacate's response to Francisco's physical appearance feels blatantly Eurocentric: he is described as having "gleaming gold hair" and eyes "blue as the sky". Compared to every human being she has ever seen or could imagine, I would think that this would translate to "monster". The Chinese thought white men were walking corpses - that seems like a much more believable response. And while I accept that it is not outside the realm of human experience for a member of an occupying force and a terrified native of an occupied city to fall in love, in this case I found it both trite and insulting to a character I came to like.

The Death-Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean - review

Geraldine McCaughrean is on a very short list in my head of people who write for children as if they think children appreciate writing. She, along with writers like N.D. Wilson, Jacqueline Woodson and Barbara O'Connor are the Margaret Atwoods and Anne Tylers of children's literature.

These writers appear to have never been told that grown-up literary elements like an ambitious premise, a driven main character, a landscape that reflects or contrasts the character's story - are things that are too rich for the child reader.

Thus we have Pepper Roux, who wakes up on his fourteenth birthday knowing that this will be the day that he dies. And thus he spends most of the next 300 pages on borrowed time, looking over his shoulder for the angels who are bound to be screeching toward him, bent on carrying him off to his eternal reward. If that's not a premise worthy of Jerzy Kosinski or Jhumpa Lahiri, I don't know what is.

And the way that Pepper effortlessly slides into a variety of identities - ship's captain, journalist, horse thief, and even loving husband - requires a complicity of the reader: requires that the reader both suspend disbelief and acknowledge the transparency of the deception, leading the reader to the very adult conclusion that the individual is less important than the role he or she plays.

But then, back again, as, in each case, Pepper's desire to do good affects his performance in each role, driving the plot, providing warmth and humor, and usually driving him on to his next role, as he invariably gets into trouble by investing his adult identities with a child's good heart.

Getting a little academic up in here, aren't we? What did I do with those gummy bears? I have to hide them from the children, and sometimes that means I've hidden them from myself as well.

So. All that literature stuff aside, The Death-Defying Pepper Roux is fully as bracing and adventurous as the title might lead one to believe. Set in the south of France, the salt air in it lifts the hair and stings the eyes. Characters are as broad as a lady's behind in a Toulouse Lautrec poster, and sometimes as sad.

The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick - review

 

When The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg won a Newbery Honor this year, there was quite a bit of woo-hoo-ing. Just as with the Oscars (18 days to go!), Newberys very rarely go to the funny. And so my ears perked up. I love funny! So I checked it out, on audio, and let 'er rip in the car.

Aaaannd... It was not exactly the comedy I'd been led to expect. This, of course, is neither the book's nor the author's fault. Instead, it is a clear-eyed Civil War picaresque told by an orphaned boy doggedly searching for his older brother, who has been illegally conscripted into the Union Army. Homer's journey starts at his home in Maine, where he runs into slave-catchers, and moves south, by rail and by steamship, by traveling show and by hot-air balloon, all the way to the battle of Gettysburg. Using this structure, Philbrick is able to shoehorn in a lot of mid-nineteenth century social landscape. This is historical fiction absorbed the easy way.

Most of the way, Homer's misfortunes are quickly recovered from - he is thrown in a pigpen, but then his furious reaction to the teasing he undergoes is noticed by the proprietor of a medicine show, who rescues him, cleans him up and gives him work impersonating a feral child in his show. Homer even gets candy and meets a nice lady with tattoos. It's a book that bounces from up to down and back again in a peppy, plotty way.

However, once Homer gets to Gettysburg, there's no up side. Philbrick describes the wailing of injured men, the misery of battle, and the terror that Homer experiences, which is intensified once he finds his brother Harold, and sees Harold rush into danger.

My kids were downright stunned by the sorrow and violence in the Gettysburg chapters. But still, I don't call that a bad thing. War is sad and violent, and my kids are old enough to get that message. I will say that the contrast between the last quarter of the novel and the first three-quarters was maybe a little abrupt.

Bob the Builder reads the audio, and while adults may find his broad vocal characterizations a little TOO broad, it is definitely easier on kids when characters have their own distinct voice.

Cromwell Dixon's Sky-Cycle by John Abbott Nez - review

Cromwell Dixon's Sky-Cycle by John Abbott Nez

I have an embarrassing confession to make. When I first heard about the balloon boy two weeks ago - the lad who was supposedly floating away in a homemade balloon - I assumed that the kid had made a flying machine, and he was taking it out for a test drive. I didn't think he was imperiled by anything more than official and parental disapproval, and that not 'til he came down.

I think I read too much juvenile fiction. Most kids don't build flying machines, and, as it turns out, such was not the case.

So imagine how happy I was to learn about Cromwell Dixon! Kid was fourteen when he started work on a homemade airship. From 1907 to 1910 he built and flew bicycle- and motor-powered flying devices, borne aloft by hydrogen-filled gasbags that his mother helped him make, winning competitions and at one point making the New York Times. Ha! Some kids build flying machines after all!

It's a great story, and I'll bet John Abbott Nez was thrilled when he ran across it. A genuine kid inventor - a boy who reached for the sky and attained it! And Nez does a great job with it. The text is energetic, with just enough technical detail to be interesting and not so much as to be a barrier. Pencils and watercolors give the art an old-timey delicacy, but a strong color palette and animated expressions keep it lively.

I especially love Cromwell's mom - she looks confident, supportive, proud, and not even an ounce worried, even when her baby boy rises into the blue yonder riding on a frame of sticks with a giant silk bag of volatile gas inches above his head. Tell you what, no son of mine's gonna try a stunt like that! Especially since, as it turns out (and as Nez doesn't mention in his book because, well, why would you) Dixon died at the age of 19, in a plane crash at a stunt flying exhibition.

To sum up: there are two kinds of moms I cannot see myself becoming - Mrs. Dixon, who stood proudly by as her son risked his life to prove that his machine worked; and Mrs. Heene, who... yeah just ugh.

My thanks to Tim Travaglini at Penguin for hooking me up with this book.

If you liked the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer - book list

If. You Liked. Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. There. I said it.

I have put together this list I don't know how many times in the past couple of years, and I guess I just have to bite the bully (get it? like Twilight shoves all the other books around?) and admit that: 1) People want to read Twilight and 2) People LIKE Twilight.

I mean, why am I such a snob about these books anyway? What was I reading when I was eleven? I'll tell you what I was reading when I was eleven. No wait, read this book - Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading by Lizzie Skurnick - and you will know what I was reading when I was eleven. And I turned out ok. Reasonably ok. Ok shut up - am I exploring my nascent sexuality with my twin brother or luring my arch-enemy into a leech-infested pool? No. I am not. That was a rhetorical question by the way.

And maybe that's setting the bar kind of low, but I think it is some kind of proof that young readers of Twilight are not going to grow up and fall in love with pale, stalker-y older men. Pale, stalker-y older men are in fact CREEPY in real life, and almost all young women are viscerally and instinctively aware of this. We can trust our girls. (Hi, Olivia! We can trust you, right?)

There's still the issue, recently pointed out by someone at the Princeton Romance Writers Conference (and I am too lazy to go looking for it so I am going to paraphrase), that these paranormal romance novels represent something of a throwback to the old doctor/nurse kind of power differential that turned so many of us against romance novels to begin with (think Mr. Rochester and his employee - Jane - in Jane Eyre). Nowadays, romance novels feature women who are just as strong as, and on equal social footing with, the men, but in Twilight et al, the male character is by definition more powerful than the girl - he's immortal! he can change into an animal! or, uh, sparkle!

But that I don't know what to do about. EXCEPT. To recommend the following pretty good books as follow up reads for people who enjoyed the romance, the drama, the imaginative world of Twilight. Some of these books feature characters with supernatural powers or are set in alternate or future worlds, but some do not. There's at least one cute boy in each, but none of them has a female protagonist as wimpy as Bella.

The Luxe by Anna Godberson. Soapy and irresistably fancy, dripping with drama. Look at that dress!

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I reviewed it here earlier. Catching Fire, the next book in the series, has just been published.

Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception by Maggie Stiefvater. An extremely cute boy, some psychic torment, a well-written, lovely setting, and a harp. It's all good.

Prom Nights from Hell. Stories by Stephenie Meyer, Meg Cabot, Lauren Myracle, and other writers who are all about what it is to be a girl.

Prom Dates from Hell (Maggie Quinn: Girl vs Evil, Book 1) by Rosemary Clements-Moore. Good-looking teens, more dramatic than it looks, snappy dialogue. I reviewed the third book in this series a couple weeks ago.

Tithe by Holly Black. Anything by Holly Black, in fact.

Margo Lanagan's Black, White, and Red books. Dark, with a side of strange, drizzled with a stylish-sexy port wine reduction.

The somewhat overlooked Troll Bridge by Jane Yolen and her son, Adam Stempel. Music, magic, peril, attitude.

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. The first in the Gemma Doyle Trilogy, about drama and magic in a Victorian boarding school.

Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause. Ms. Klause has been writing about the allure of the supernatural boy for longer than anyone, and in this one, the boy's a werewolf. Grrr!

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith

Peeps by Scott Westerfeld

Graceling by Kristin Cashore. Horses, swords, special powers, a fiery heroine, and a gorgeous guy. The sequel, Fire, will be out in early October.

and what the heck... you know what else any red-blooded reader of the Twilight books will like?

Flowers in the Attic, by V.C. Andrews. It's wrong. It's hot. It's so hot that it's wrong and it's so wrong that it's hot. And you just know "V.C. Andrews" is a pseudonym. Who do you think it is really? Wonder if that's what Salinger's been up to all this time.

Tsunami! by Kimiko Kajikawa, illustrated by Ed Young - review

Tsunami! by Kimiko Kajikawa, illustrated by Ed Young
Breathtaking. Pass-around-the-workroom-and-marvel-at-it gorgeous. Intense. Gripping. A terrific story. I seem unable to describe this book except in tiny movie-blurb phrases. It's that good.

Gazing upon the illustrations in Tsunami!, I could feel the thunder of the great wave in my chest. I felt the pressure of the silence before the wave, and I heard its hissing retreat. The two-page spread of the wave hovering over the village is the best work that Ed Young has ever done, and the story is just as strong. He depicts scale so masterfully here - the temple gate, in pieces, tiny against the crashing wave... the villagers so small as to look like confetti on the exposed beach.

I am grateful that the story is set "long ago" in Japan. If this book had been about the more recent tsunami, it would have been too emotionally wrenching for me, and possibly for younger readers too.

Labels: age: adult children, age: Grade1 and up, diverse cultures, picture books, superstar books

Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run by Michael Hemphill and Sam Riddleburger

Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run by Michael Hemphill and Sam Riddleburger
I grew up in Maryland. Which means that every third field trip was to some vast undulant green field that once played host to one of the big bloody shindigs of the Civil War. Bull Run, Appomattox, Antietam. Harper's Ferry, Yorktown. Gettysburg if you were lucky, because at least then there was a side trip to the farmers' market, where all the bad kids bought bullwhips which the teachers confiscated for the bus ride home.

Ohhh, god that stuff was boring to me. Whatever visualizations the Park Service dreamed up: films, dioramas, 3-D maps with little lights, rangers in uniform... I never could get it up for the Civil War. Still can't. Seriously, I'm a full-on adult - a librarian, a photo archivist, a reader - who has never given a rat's rosy rumpus about the American Civil War. It's embarrassing but true.

Which is why Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run has me SO IMPRESSED. Twelve-year-old Stonewall (named after the general by his obsessed parents) shares my outlook - he's been frog-marched to Civil War re-enactments every weekend since he was six, and he knows enough about the Civil War to know that he is not interested in it in the least.

I have to say, I was a little dubious at first. Those obsessed parents are pretty monolithic in their disdain, disregard, and disapproval of Stonewall, and Stonewall is good and sick of weekends without his PlayStation. I wasn't looking forward to, say, a father-son adventure during which they Learn To Appreciate Each Other's Skills And/Or Outlook.

Luckily, when Stonewall is catapulted back in time to the real Battle of First Manassas (aka Bull Run, the first battle of the Civil War), his parents are left behind, presumably to putter around pretending to shoot other History Channel addicts in the twenty-first century. No more jerky dad 'til the very end.

Instead, we get the entire Confederate Army, such as it was at this point in the war: barefoot and smelly, raggedly armed and freshly learning the terrifying and painful realities of battle. And Stonewall's reaction is even more visceral - no matter what words Stonewall uses in his fast-paced, detailed narration, you know that he is really saying "Holy crap!"

The action is easy to follow, though the decision to include a map of the battlefield is a good one. The supporting characters, though a bit broadly drawn, satisfy. The conclusions that Stonewall comes to - about war, slavery, freedom, and bravery - are strongly supported by the events that he witnesses. No murky philosophizin' here:

Most of them, I bet, had visions when they enlisted of doing heroic things in battle. But I wonder how many had thought about what really happens in war, that you might really get shot, get killed. I don't think my father and his reenactors think too much about this part of a Civil War soldier's life. How can you and still want to reenact it? (italics mine)

By the end of the book, Stonewall has a mission that reverberates into his own time, a pretty girl to share it with, and most importantly, a reason to attend next weekend's reenactment. Which I assume is also a reason for these authors to write another book. I hope so, because Stonewall Hinkleman humanizes the Civil War like nothing I've ever read.

Labels: adventure, age: Grade3 and up, boy books, historical fiction, science fiction, superstar books

The Lindbergh Child (A Treasury of XXth Century Murder) by Rick Geary - review

The Lindbergh Child (A Treasury of XXth Century Murder) by Rick Geary

It's tough not to love Rick Geary. That fussy, old-fashioned style: all those millions of parallel contour lines, his little crenellated edge lines, the beautiful hand lettering... all of it making everything he illustrates look so elegant and classy and clean. Which is so great, because, by and large, lately, Rick Geary illustrates crime.

This contrast nets the most tee-hees in the truly grisly stories - I think I remember reading The Borden Tragedy when it came out, and I seem to recall he does a nice job with severed limbs - but even absent any gore, The Lindbergh Child is an engrossing read.

I am very pleased to have it as an addition to the True Crime nonfiction shelves, and even more pleased that the lack of nudity or profanity gives me carte blanche to recommend it to anyone who can hack the history. About grade 4 and up.

Labels: age: adult children, age: Grade5 and up, graphic novels, history, nonfiction, YA

Tupelo rides the rails by Melissa Sweet - review

Tupelo rides the rails by Melissa Sweet
Melissa Sweet is a prolific illustrator whose work I have admired in a lot of different contexts. The Boy Who Drew Birds and Girls Think of Everything were both considerably enhanced by her work.

I didn't ever get a chance to see the first book she wrote herself, Carmine, so I was glad to bring home Tupelo Rides the Rails, and I'm super-glad to report it is just as charming and heartfelt as her watercolor and mixed-media illustrations.

Tupelo is an abandoned dog (sad!) who falls in with a pack of other strays who call themselves the BONEHEADS. Each dog is hoping for a home, and, with the help of a hobo named Garbage Pail Tex, each one finds one - except Tupelo (sad!). In the end, Tupelo is adopted by Garbage Pail Tex, and they settle in for a life riding the rails together (happy!).

There are lots of sturdy fold-outs and lots of dog characters, each with a distinctive look and voice. You can tell Melissa Sweet really likes dogs. Although Tupelo is a bit text-heavy, my kids sat still for the whole thing and even asked for it again.

Endpaper bonus: gorgeous old maps of the heavens and a timeline of canine history (in dog years).

Labels: adoption, age: Grade1 and up, animals, picture books

Close to the wind: The Beaufort Scale by Peter Malone - review

Lest anyone think that Pink Me opinion is one-sided, here is evidence that I make my friends read books I like, so that I can get my opinions validated. Of course, if they don't agree with me, I cut them off forever. No beer for you!

So, my friend Aimee here (and to a certain extent, Juicy Boy on her lap, who is really too young for this book), as well as a whole Friday porch-load of other readers, fully endorse Close to the Wind: The Beaufort Scale as one spectacular work of juvenile non-fiction.

I have something of a bias toward non-fiction, it's true. That's partly why I made Aimee, Molly, and Bob all read this book. But come on! Close to the Wind has it all: a gripping plot! Factual information presented in a way that is easy to grasp! Characters! Beautiful, detailed illustration! A map! A glossary! References! A biographical note! And all of it interesting!

The nominal purpose of this book is to illustrate the Beaufort Scale, a standardized way to measure the force of the wind. Developed in 1805, before the invention of instruments to measure wind speed, Beaufort's scale is based on observation, and therefore can be explained easily to almost anyone. At Beaufort 2, leaves rustle. Got it.

But Malone goes much further. He invents a 12-year-old midshipman, William, aboard a British Navy ship in 1805. Using William's letters home to his sister and gorgeous illustrations that employ unexpected points of view, (much like Brian Floca's Lightship, recently reviewed here) he gives the Beaufort Scale context and consequence. When the ship survives a hurricane (Beaufort 12) and hobbles into harbor at the end of the book, we all breathe a sigh of relief for William and the rest of the crew.

Recommended for any reader.

Labels: adventure, age: Grade3 and up, history, nonfiction, science

When the Shadbush blooms, by Carla Messinger, illustrated by David Kanietakeron Fadden - review

When the Shadbush Blooms, by Carla Messinger, with Susan Katz, illustrated by David Kanietakeron Fadden

"My grandparents' grandparents walked beside the same stream where I walk with my brother, and we can see what they saw."

Clever. Not to mention interesting, cadenced, and grounded. This book takes us through the cycles of the year as defined by the Lenni Lenape people, Native people who originally lived along the eastern seaboard of North America. Each page spread shows the sights and activities of the season - on the left, as experienced by "my grandparents' grandparents" and on the right as experienced by a modern-day Native girl and her family.

Carla Messinger, an educator and museum professional, links the past with the present in a homely, happy, and extremely skillful way. Much of the American landscape has been altered in the six generations expressed by "my grandparents' grandparents," but this book encourages families to look beyond the built environment to discern what has persisted, and to think about how that landscape might have been experienced by those who lived here before. There's a place outside of Cleveland, quite near the nuclear power plant, actually, where you can see lush green forests and Lake Erie in the distance. Every time I passed by Perry, Ohio, I would think, "If I were a hunter-gatherer, I would take one look at this spot and call it home."

There's more information about the Lenni Lenape in the back. "American Girl," indeed!

Labels: age: PreK - Grade3, diverse cultures, diversity, picture books

Junk Man's Daughter by Sonia Levitin - review

Junk Man's Daughter by Sonia Levitin with illustrations by Guy Porfirio
This is from the Tales of Young Americans series, which I think is not part of the American Girl empire. Just the same, it is a straightforward little historical fiction picture book of a family coming to America, facing poverty, and becoming successful through perserverence, ingenuity and hard work. I am sure there are kids for this book. All due respect to Sonia Levitin? but not really any that I know though.

Labels: age: Grade3 and up, diverse cultures, diversity, girl books, historical fiction, picture books

Victory, by Susan Cooper - review

Victory by Susan Cooper. When I was a kid, I read Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series at least once a year starting in 5th grade. There's a movie of the first book out, a movie that apparently poops all over the plot and characters, which is a darn shame, because they're wonderful. My imagination developed like a print in a darkroom because of those books.

Now, I clearly remember that it was 5th grade when I first read The Dark is Rising, because I did a book report on it for Mrs. Milloff's class. Mrs. Milloff was really large and really really short, and kind of grey and hairy to boot, plus she had a fierce New York accent. She would have easily fit in at Hogwarts. Maybe that's where she's teaching now. I liked her, and oh sure, she was unforgettable.

So it was with some surprise that I spotted Victory by Susan Cooper on the New Books shelf. I mean, 5th grade was 30 years ago (I am shocked to realize). It's the same Susan Cooper, I checked. But this book is not about semi-mystical peril in the Welsh countryside, it's about Admiral Nelson. Ugh you say. Certainly Ugh I said. Naval history, god, I think only my father reads it, and I'm pretty sure he reads it so that he'll have at least one subject that he is sure to know more about than anyone within earshot.

But I read it out of loyalty to Susan Cooper, and it turned out to be a real page-turner. It's told by alternating narrators: Sam, a young crewmember on board Victory, Admiral Nelson's ship; and Molly, a lonely 21st century girl recently transplanted to Connecticut from her home in England. The descriptions are vivid and believable and the action is quick and exciting. As with many novels based on actual events, the book has to go to some manufactured lengths to inject suspense towards the end, but that is a very minor issue that most kid readers will not resent. And that cover, well, it's handsome, but a bit cryptic for my younger patrons.

Victory takes pride of place on my list of historical fiction to recommend to young readers who either like historical fiction or are required to read some for school. Thumbs up.

Labels: age: Grade5 and up, boy books, fiction, historical fiction, mystery

Some favorite books for teens

• Kiki Strike:Inside the Shadow City by Kirsten Miller. Fifth grade girls exploring an underground New York City. History, espionage and adventure.


• The Supernaturalist by Eoin Colfer. It's sci-fi, but it's not all magicky. Lots of action and an intricate plot. Chiwitel Ejiofor reads the audio version - mmmm!
  


• Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman by Eleanor Upland. In Victorian London, a thief reinvents himself as a gentleman. Interesting information about the jail system and sewers, and a great story. The great Stephen Fry reads the audio version.
  


• Stowaway by Karen Hesse. Inspired by the true story of a boy who stowed away on Captain Cook's ship Endeavour on its 1768 voyage of discovery. Great gateway to the amazing story of the voyage, written with economy and color. I don't remember the name of the reader on the audio version, but he was perfect.
  


• His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass) by Phillip Pullman. Indescribable. I ripped through these 3 books in about a week. Metaphysics, politics, fantasy, all in a quick-moving, tightly-plotted story.


• Alex Rider series (Stormbreaker, Point Blank, Skeleton Key, Eagle Strike, and Scorpia) by Anthony Horowitz. 13-year-old MI6 agent. James Bond, Jr.


• Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books by Francesca Lia Block. These are lovely. Weetzie and her friends live their dreams in Los Angeles. They fall in love, break up, have babies, and dress like Patricia Field threw up all over them.

Labels: fiction, YA