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Mother Reader’s 48-Hour Book Challenge

Jun5

I waffled back and forth and over and under about whether or not to join in on Mother Reader’s 48-Hour Book Challenge. I can’t really participate for 48 hours during the time of the challenge, but I decided to start at 12:30 today, June 5th and finish on Monday morning for my own 43 1/2 hour challenge.

My first book is Countdown by Deborah Wiles, a review book kindly sent to me by the publicist working with Scholastic.

“Countdown is the first in a new trilogy of “documentary novels” set in the 1960s- a fascinating historical documentary in a unique style and format. Filled with photos, news clippings, and songs of the era, this novel tells the story of Franny Chapman, an eleven-year-old girl living in Washington, DC, set against the backdrop of one of the most politically and culturally defining periods in history.”

The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone

May15

Doesn’t everyone like miniatures? Miniature furniture? Dollhouses? I had no idea that The Art Institute of Chicago had a collection called The Thorne Miniature Rooms:

The 68 Thorne Miniature Rooms enable one to glimpse elements of European interiors from the late 13th century to the 1930s and American furnishings from the 17th century to the 1930s. Painstakingly constructed on a scale of one inch to one foot, these fascinating models were conceived by Mrs. James Ward Thorne of Chicago and constructed between 1932 and 1940 by master craftsmen according to her specifications.

Now I want to go see the miniature rooms. Have any of you been there?

The SIxty-Eight Rooms is a fantasy story for middle grade children (a la Narnia or N.D. WIlson’s 100 Cupboards) about entering into different times and worlds through the rooms in the Thorne Collection. I thought it was great, and it reminded me of so many favorites:

Like the Narnia books, The Sixty-Eight Rooms is about children who find a way into another world, or at least another time in our world.

Instead of 100 cupboards, there are sixty-eight miniature rooms and the worlds they open into, waiting to be explored.

As in the magical books by Edward Eager and E. Nesbit, the magic in The Sixty-Eight Rooms has certain rules that children must figure out as they go along. The magic in these books is something that must be discovered and its rules obeyed if the children want to continue in their adventure. Any Which Wall by Laurel Snyder is another book in this genre.

As in Masterpiece by Elise Broach and Chasing Vermeer and the other art museum fiction books by Blue Balliet, the central setting for the adventure in The SIxty-Eight Rooms is an art museum. Kids can learn a lot about art and artists from all of these books while enjoying a cracking good story at the same time.

Like Claudia and Jamie in the classic From the MIxed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Jack and Ruthie in The Sixty-Eight Rooms must figure out how to spend the night in the museum without being caught, and they explore some wonderfully luxurious museum rooms, too.

What I’m saying with all of these comparisons is, if you liked any of the above books, authors, or series, you’ll probably enjoy The Sixty-Eight Rooms, too. And it looks as if, judging from the ending of this first book, there will be more books to come about the magic of the Thorne Rooms. The ending, by the way, was satisfactory, but definitely left room for a sequel.

To Come and Go Like Magic by Katie Pickard Fawcett

May11

To Come and Go Like Magic is a middle grade fiction title about wanderlust, about wanting to leave home and see the world and yet wanting to know that there will always be a home to return to.

The story is written in short, vignette-style chapters, each one giving a glimpse into the life of twelve year old Chileda Sue Mahoney of Mercy Hill, Kentucky. Chili Sue is growing up in the heart of Appalachia in the 1970’s, the same decade that I experienced adolescence. My small town childhood in West Texas may have been a bit more filled with opportunity and vision than Chili’s, but I understand the general theme and feeling of the book: how Chili Sue wants to travel, go somewhere, see foreign places, and how she fears that her dreams will never come true.

Lots of good, growing-up, wisdom in this book:

On losing friends:
“One day at the Piggly-Wiggly, Melody Reece was wearing Ginny’s sandals. Last year we traded. . . . I stopped in the aisle that day holding a head of iceberg lettuce and a dozen eggs with my eyes hooked on Melody’s feet. Her toenails were painted neon purple and this completely ruined the natural effect of those sandals. Suddenly I realized–this is how it happens. One day you occupy a spot in a pea pod where you trade shoes and T-shirts and secrets, and the next day your spot goes to somebody else.”

On leaving home:
“I always figured Lenny would leave and not look back, but he says even when your number-one goal in life is to leave a place, you might still want to remember it.”

On respect:
“Pop says this is just like a VISTA. They like to show the dirt roads and the shacks and the barefoot kids on television and leave out everything that’s good and pretty. We’re not down her to promote tourism, they say, when anybody complains. But in these hills even kids with shoes go barefoot. We like to go barefoot. We get stung by honeybees till our feet swell up and turn red and itch like the dickens, but barefoot is who we are.”

On sweetness:
“Well,” she says, “you could be a real sweet girl if you didn’t sass.”
I look at the floor. Sweet. That’s the last thing on earth I want to be. You can find sweet all over the place. Mercy Hill’s cup is running over with sweetness.
“I don’t want to be sweet,” I say. “I want to go places . . . I want to really go places, like travel to the other side of the world.”

To Come and Go Like Magic is a good, gentle, dare I say sweet, story about growing up in the hills of Kentucky and trying to figure out life while living it and listening to all the voices around you giving you all kinds of different advice. Chileda Sue finally charts her own course, concluding, “I can leave Mercy Hill, but Mercy Hill won’t ever leave me.”

Little Blog on the Prairie by Cathleen Davitt Bell

Apr24

I read an ARC of this YA/middle grade title, and I thought it was just OK. Gen’s family goes to a “frontier camp” for vacation, and they are expected to live like people in the 1890’s (ala PBS’s Frontier House, which the author acknowledges as inspiration at the end of the book). Unfortunately, Gen’s broken the rules by bringing along her new cell phone, and her friend back home has set up a blog to record all of Gen’s impressions of the place and the people in the “frontier” community.

Several of the characters were unbelievable. Gen’s dad goes on a three month vacation, not only not having read the brochure about the camp, but also not having listened to anything Gen’s mom told the family about the camp. He’s completely blindsided by the idea that the family has agreed to live like the pioneers, and he doesn’t know what to do about the entire experience. But he stays anyway and spends his days cutting down trees to scare away the bears. Really? Would anyone set off on a three month vacation without knowing anything about where he’s going or what he’ll be doing?

Norah, the daughter of the camp’s proprietors, is incredibly sheltered and naive and at the same time, she acts as if she knows all about human nature and modern technology. Norah isn’t a very likable girl, and she comes across as one of those stereotypical over-protected homeschoolers that I only find in books, not in real life. Only Norah’s so isolated and the friendships she’s made have been so transient that she has become bitter and disagreeable. That’s what life in the 1890’s will do to a healthy American teenager.

Caleb, Gen’s “love interest”, is so nondescript that I have trouble saying anything about him. He wears a leather necklace, and Gen thinks he’s cute.

Watch Frontier House if you want to see what radical historical reenactment will do for and to a normal American family. Read the book as a way to pass a few hours, but not for history or for character development. Publication date for this title from Bloomsbury is May 11, 2010.