Time travel at its most historically teach-y. I learned a lot about the Dreyfus affair, but the time travel elements of this story were too unbelievable. Mira keeps traveling back and forth from our time to various times in the late nineteenth century, and she meets many of the same people at different key points in their lives: Degas, Monet, Mary Cassatt, Emile Zola. The problem is that none of these people seem too surprised or inquisitive when she stays the same age, but shows up at five and ten year gaps in their nineteenth century lives.
There’s a bit of romance thrown into the mix when Mira gets a crush on Degas’s assistant, Claude, but this element, too, is spoiled by the time lapse time-traveling that Mira does. Claude gets older Mira doesn’t. Her main mission, to find a way to motivate people to defend Dreyfuss and nip French anti-Semitism in the bud meets with mixed success at best, probably because history didn’t really turn out that way, did it?
Marissa Moss is the author of the very popular Dear Amelia series of diary/graphic novel/picture books for younger readers. This diary, the first in a projected series, is for older middle grade young people, and the fact that it has a Jewish protagonist is refreshing. However, I don’t think I can get my middle grade readers to try this one on the basis of their love for the Amelia books. It’s just too different, even though it does have some drawings included in the text since Mira is an artist. The sequel to Mira’s Diary: Lost in Paris is Mira’s Diary: Home Sweet Rome, due out in April, 2013. In this second one, Mira goes time-traveling again and meets the sixteenth century artist Carvaggio, so the art theme carries on through the series.
What’s Out Space Travel:The Prince Who Fell from the Sky by John Claude Bemis sort of fits into this genre, but it’s really more about a journey with talking animals through a dystopian future world. Gary Schmidt’s What Came from the Stars is more of a high fantasy combined with an encounter between good and evil than it is about exploring outer space. Circus Galacticus by Deva Fagan is the only real space travel book of the lot that I can remember.
A not-too-compelling entry in the Christian horror-dystopia-weird creatures genre.
I dunno. If you like stories about supernatural creatures but want to keep your reading theologically borderline sound and sexually pure (those vampire/zombie stories get nasty sometimes), then this debut novel from Thomas Nelson Publishers might fit the bill. I found the idea of nephilim who are half angel/half human a bit hard to swallow. It’s based on Genesis 6, the story of how “the sons of God” married “the daughters of men” and had children who were “giants.”
The nephilim in Spirit Fighter are not giants, and they’re not all half angel, but rather some are only one quarter angel. Jonah and his sister Eliza find out that their mother is a nepilim, the daughter of a human mother and a fallen angel, at the same time that they find out that Mom has been kidnapped by fallen angels. The evil demons believe that Jonah’s mom will “come over to the dark side” and be very powerful in defeating the plans of Elohim, as they call God, because of her nephilim heritage.
Guided by a guardian angel and empowered with special gifts as a result of their own 1/4 angel heritage, Jonah and Eliza go to New York to rescue mom. This book is the first in the Son of Angels: Jonah Stone series.
Tagline: “Your mom always said you were an angel, what if she was right?”
I liked the second book better than I did the first, I think. Children who like puzzles and magic tricks would really find this book and its prequel, Horten’s Miraculous Mechanisms, quite compelling.
I just wanted more character development, more reasons to like or at least sympathize with the children in the two stories. Stuart is short, curious, and persistent. The triplets are annoying, and I had trouble telling them apart, even though I get the names attached in print. I couldn’t remember which one was which, so they all three felt annoying.
The puzzles are good and appropriate for ten and eleven year olds—which is not to say that I could have solved them myself. Sometimes it takes a child to solve a child’s puzzle. Anyway, for budding magicians and illusionists, Horten’s two books (so far) would be the perfect summer, or anytime, read.
For my Cybils judging responsibilities this year I read 84 of the 151 books nominated. I still have more that I would like to read in the next couple of months. Of those 84, these are my twelve favorites:
Princess Academy Palace of Stone by Shannon Hale. The only one of these favorites I didn’t get around to reviewing, but it’s Shannon Hale and it’s wonderful. I closed the book at the end with a happy and satisfied sigh.
The shortlists of Cybils finalists for 2012 in all of the categories are posted today at the Cybils website. Take a look and add to your reading list from these well-written, high kid-appeal books for young adults and children–all published between November 2011 and October 2012.
Children: “you must never ever light a fire yourself, unless under the close supervision of a responsible adult pig with advanced circus training.” Nanny Piggins and the Wicked Plan by R.A. Spratt.
“[P]eople run deep and complicated like rivers, hold their shape and are carved upon like stone.” Crossed by Ally Condie.
“Listen to your second thought, or the third might be too late.†Palace of Stone by Shannon Hale.
“Truth is when your gut and your mind agree.” Palace of Stone by Shannon Hale.
“Words can fall hard like a boulder loosed from a cliff. Words can drift unnoticed like a weed seed on a breeze. Words can sing.†Palace of Stone by Shannon Hale.
“An idea is like fire under ice. You can try to put out the fire, but the melting has already begun.” Palace of Stone by Shannon Hale.
“Once someone is picking a lock, there’s not a lot you can do except stand in front of them to block them from view and whistle. . . Whistling is probably optional.” ~Project Jackalope by Emily Ecton.
“If one does not know how one will cross a bridge, one best figure that out before one reaches it. Otherwise, it is just poor planning.” ~Beauty and the Beast by Wendy Mass.
“[N]ot everyone who lives on a pretty street is a good person, and . . . even in the rottenest places you might find someone you can trust with your life.” ~Deadweather and Sunrise by Geoff Rodkey.
“Youth is overrated. Anyone can be a genius at twenty-five. The trick is to be one at fifty.” Degas in Mira’s Diary: Lost in Paris by Marissa Moss.
“All mirrors are magic, or can be. They show you yourself, after all. Really seeing yourself, though–that’s the hard part.” ~In a Glass Grimmly by Adam Gidwitz.
“There are other ways to be brave without demonstrating it with the sword. Most battles are won by changing minds and turning hearts. Sometimes that’s all the bravery you need.” Iron Hearted Violet by Kelly Barnhill.
“A real princess engages with the world in a state of grace. It is with grace that she listens and with grace that she speaks. A princess loves her people , no matter what their birth or station. Even ugly jailers.” Iron Hearted Violet by Kelly Barnhill.
“Love [is] sharp and hot and dangerous. . . Love transforms our fragile, cowardly hearts into hearts of stone, hearts of blade, hearts of hardest iron. Because love makes heroes of us all.” Iron Hearted Violet by Kelly Barnhill.
“It is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keeps the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.” ~Gandalf in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
“You get the face you build your whole life, with work and loving and grieving and laughing and frowning.” ~The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherine Valente.
“Sometimes the best decision is a painful one, but it is never one made out of anger.” ~Starry River of the Sky by Grace Lin.
“It is better to light a lantern than to bemoan the darkness.” ~Starry River of the Sky by Grace Lin.
“The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves–say rather, loved in spite of ourselves.” Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.
As for methods of prayer, all are good, as long as they are sincere. ~Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.
SATURDAY December 29th, will be a special edition of the Saturday Review of Books especially for booklists. You can link to a list of your favorite books read in 2012, a list of all the books you read in 2012, a list of the books you plan to read in 2013, or any other end of the year or beginning of the year list of books. Whatever your list, it’s time for book lists. So come back on Saturday the 29th to link to yours, if I missed it and it’s not already here.
However I’ve spent the past couple of weeks gathering up all the lists I could find and linking to them here. I’ll be posting each day this week and next, leading up to Saturday the 29th, a selection of end-of-the-year lists with my own comments. I’m also trying my hand at (unsolicited) book advisory by suggesting some possibilities for 2013 reading for each blogger whose list I link. I did this last year, and I don’t really know if anyone paid attention or not. I do know that I enjoyed exercising my book-recommending brain.
If I didn’t get your list linked ahead of time and if you leave your list in the linky on Saturday, December 29th, I’ll try to advise you, too, in a separate post.
Tony Reinke, author of Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books, shares a list of the Top 12 Books of 2012 at John Piper’s Desiring God blog. Several of these sound really good, including Jared Wilson’s Gospel Deeps and Eyes Wide Open: Enjoying God in Everything by Steve DeWitt. I hesitate to recommend anything to such a well-read author, but fools rush in. Perhaps Mr. Reinke would benefit from and enjoy a couple of books that have helped me this year: Equipped to Love by Norm Wakefield, an excellent teaching book on the contrast between idolatry and real love, and Phil Vischer’s memoir (which contains some choice nuggets of spiritual truth), Me, Myself, and Bob.
LitLove at Tales from the Reading Room has a Best Books of 2012 list that includes Willa Cather, Ann Patchett, Kate Summerscale, and Lianne Moriarity, among others. She might like the mystery I just finished, A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd, or as I suggested last year, something by Edna Ferber or Wendell Berry.
Ready When You Are C.B.: Favorite Reads of 2012, the Longlist. Because of Mr. James’ list and several others, I’m going to have to read HHhH by Laurent Binet, and I think something, probably Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. I’m going to go out on a limb and recommend The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky to Mr. James, based more on his favorites from 2009. That one ought to keep him busy for a while.
Book Diary: My Best Books of 2012. I saw several books on this list that I want to check out, too: Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, Brain on Fire by Susanah Cahalan, and In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner. I think Kathy might like The Mascot by Mark Kurzem (nonfiction) and My Enemy’s Cradle by Sara Young (Fiction, both set during World War II.
O.K. that’s ten (or more) lists for today. Come back tomorrow for more, and don’t forget to to add your year-end booklist to the Saturday Review of Books on December 29th.
I once tried reading The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, but both the plot and the humor eluded my grasp. I did better, or Mr. Fforde did, with The Last Dragonslayer. The humor in this book reminded me of The Princess Bride or Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. High praise indeed.
Almost-sixteen-year-old Jennifer Strange is temporary manager of Kazam Mystical Arts Management, an employment agency for sorcerers, magicians, and wizards, most of whom are almost out of “wizidrical” energy. Magic has been waning in the UnUnited Kingdoms for the last four hundred years, give or take, since the initiation of the Dragon Pact. The dragon population has also been dwindling, and now the kingdoms are down to one last dragon. And one last dragon-slayer.
I think this book will appeal more to teens and young adults rather than middle grade readers. The humor is wry and witty and based on making fun of human materialism, greed, and warlike tendencies. Jennifer, the protagonist, does a lot of running around trying to figure out what’s happening and how she can manage the magical events that are mostly out of her control. Other than that, not much really happens. But it is funny. As a sidekick Jennifer sports a Quarkbeast, a “ferocious beast” who looks like “an open knife drawer on legs” and whose only line is “Quark,” spoken at appropriate intervals. And the book also features aging wizards and dragons in various stages of decrepitude and disrepute, a crazy, greedy king, and a Slayermobile (Rolls-Royce). What else could a reader ask for? I can picture this book as a movie. Maybe it’s already been optioned.
Two more books are coming in the series, The Chronicles of Kazam, The Song of the Quarkbeast and The Return of Shandar. The Song of the Quarkbeast has already been published in the UK, but it’s not yet available in the United States. I’m looking forward to reading both of them.
Pirates and treasure and ugly fruit and heroes and islands and ocean adventure, oh, my! Yeah, it doesn’t quite have the rhythm and swing I’d like it to have, and neither does this book. But for a pirate story aficionado, Deadweather and Sunrise might do the trick.
Deadweather and Sunrise is billed as Book 1 of the Chronicles of Egg. In the story, the aforementioned Egg lives on Deadweather Island with his abusive father and two siblings who also mistreat him. They all live together on an ugly fruit plantation until on a trip to nearby Sunrise Island, Egg’s family disappears and Egg is left in the care of the very rich Pembroke family: mother, father, and spoiled, sheltered daughter, Millicent. Egg crushes on Millicent; someone tries to kill Egg, and the adventure begins.
There’s a possible treasure to be found, and there are pirates, either to defeat or to enlist as allies. Not everything or everyone is to be taken at face value. As Egg very wisely learns, “”[N]ot everyone who lives on a pretty street is a good person, and . . . even in the rottenest places you might find someone you can trust with your life.”
I think this book might be one of those things that shouldn’t be immediately devalued or written off. The story has potential not only to “grow on” the reader with time for reflection but also to get even better in the next book(s) in the series. Egg’s supporting cast is made up of thieves and rogues and mostly unreliable people, but Egg himself is a kind of Oliver Twist character transported to a mythical South Sea island world.
Recommend to those who like pirate stories, Dickensian fantasy worlds, or poverty-stricken boy heroes.
There are (at least) two approaches to the recasting of old tales for children–anything from fairy tales to Chaucer to Shakespeare to even the stories of the Bible. Because these stories were not necessarily written (or told) for children, they sometimes contain dark, very dark, material –blood and violence and illicit sex and senseless mayhem and other things that are just nasty or repulsive and not terribly uplifting or useful to educate or grow or even entertain young minds.
Of course, if an author wants to re-tell a story that contains disturbing elements for a young audience, it can be bowdlerized. “Thomas Bowdler was an English physician and philanthropist, best known for publishing The Family Shakspeare, an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare’s work, edited by his sister Henrietta Maria Bowdler, intended to be more appropriate for 19th century women and children than the original.” (Wikipedia, Thomas Bowdler) Bowdlerization has been denigrated, unjustifiably in my opinion, but it’s done all the time. As Mr. Gidwitz says in his introduction to In a Glass Grimmly, “Once upon a time, fairy tales were horrible. . . strange, bloody, and horrible.” And almost all of the storytellers since then have downplayed or bowdlerized the bloody, gruesome, unpalatable parts of the fairy tales they were telling—for the sake of the children and even the adults who are reading.
Some would say that the older the audience the more unjustified the omissions and changes are. However, an author or storyteller who is spinning his own story made up of elements of old tales has the right to pick and choose the elements he thinks will make for the strongest and most artistic story. Some of the darker elements, especially for an older audience, may make the story stronger and more meaningful or they may just make it it stupid or repugnant, as in the example that Mr. Gidwitz also shares of how Cinderella’s step-sisters actually sliced off parts their feet to make them fit into the glass slipper. I can’t imagine how that little detail would improve the story unless you’re doing a meditation on self-injury and cutting.
So, anyway, one direction to go is to cut out the nasty parts. The other approach is to play up the nastiness: describe in great and excruciating detail how Jack the giant killer eviscerated the giant and just how the blood and vomit mixed on the floor and how utterly revolting and disgusting the entire scene was. Use phrases such as “the steaming, putrid pool rippled” or “spilling his blood and viscera and porridge” or “a burbling swamp of (stomach) acid” (actual phrases from In a Glass Grimmly, and not the most revolting ones), and maybe because you used descriptive, mature vocabulary words in your middle grade fantasy novel, people will ooh and aah and say how well-written the novel is.
In a Glass Grimmly takes the well-written but disgusting approach, and not to good effect. I waded, or at least skimmed, through all the blood and vomit in giant-land, and I was not impressed. The descriptions are vivid, and I suppose, well-written, but the chapters are sort of disconnected, and the narrator is intrusive and annoying. I hate books that seem to say, “Oh, kids like gross, nasty, slimy stuff. Let’s take the really loathsome parts of this tale and make them the centerpiece of the narrative because that will draw the kids in.”
There was a bit of redeeming value towards the end of the book, but it wasn’t enough to make up for all the gratuitous blood, gore, guts, and puke that came before. When the narrator actually says, “Ooooh, you won’t like this part. You might want to put the book down now,” then it’s supposed to make me feel contrary enough to go ahead and read anyway? It’s kind of like saying, “I double dog dare you!” But it made me feel SO contrary that I wanted to close the book immediately because I knew the author/narrator didn’t really want me to quit reading. I think many (most?) kids are smart enough to get the same message.
About the only thing I did enjoy while reading In a Glass Grimmly was trying to figure out which fairy tale each part of the story came from, but I thought it meandered quite a bit. And it isn’t the “darkness” of the book or of its original sources that I’m complaining about. Guts and vomit aren’t really dark; they’re just foul and I think, pandering.
If this review makes you want to read the book even more than you did before, you are the intended audience. Have fun.
Time travel at its most historically teach-y. I learned a lot about the Dreyfus affair, but the time travel elements of this story were too unbelievable. Mira keeps traveling back and forth from our time to various times in the late nineteenth century, and she meets many of the same people at different key points in their lives: Degas, Monet, Mary Cassatt, Emile Zola. The problem is that none of these people seem too surprised or inquisitive when she stays the same age, but shows up at five and ten year gaps in their nineteenth century lives.
