Author Sharon Creech and her husband now live in Maine, “lured there by our grandchildren.” She writes, “Moo was inspired by our mutual love of Maine and by our granddaughter’s involvement in a local 4H program. We have all been enchanted by the charms of cows.”

So Moo is a book centered on the charms of both Maine and cows. Although it took me a while to be charmed, by the end of the book, I was. I don’t think this one is great literature or great poetry, but it is a nice little nugget of endearment. Twelve year old Reena and her family move from the city, probably New York City, to rural Maine. Reena and her seven year old brother Luke go to “help out” their elderly neighbor Mrs. Falala (Fa-LA-la) at her house which hosts a pig named Paulie, a cat named China, a snake called , and most notably, cow, Zora. It’s a typical set up: a crochety, unapproachable, eccentric old person becomes the best friend and mentor to a child or children; in this case Reena and Luke are the children. It’s rather predictable, but sweet, too. The cow, Zora, is “ornery and stubborn, wouldn’t listen to anybody, and was selfish beyond selfish, and filthy, caked with mud and dust.” (punctuation added)

The book is written in part poetry, part prose, part prose poem. It could have used some more punctuation and fewer visual effects and typological devices and line breaks. The story was funny, the language and imagery were effective and vivid, but I was distracted by the entrances and exits into poetry and non-poetry and sort of poetic. I have a daughter who loves verse novels, partly, I think, because of all the space on the pages and because of the rich language. She is not much of a reader, but she has a rich vocabulary and enjoys words and language. However, I’m not sure if she would like this novel or not. It’s neither fish nor fowl, neither all prose nor all poetry. Maybe a good transition?

Read it if you want to gain a deeper appreciation for the charms of cows.

Fortune Falls by Jenny Goebel.
Sticks and Stones by Abby Cooper.

These books were similar in many ways. Our female protagonist in each book is a bit of a misfit, even an outcast, with a poor self-image and an innate limitation that exacerbates that problem. In the book Fortune Falls, Sadie is an Unlucky who lives in a town, Fortune Falls, where superstitions such as breaking your mother’s back when you step on a crack, are true laws of nature. In Sticks and Stones, Elyse suffers with CAV, a condition that causes the words that people use to describe her, good and bad, to appear in bold print on her arms and legs. The bad words, like “loser” or “klutz” or worse, itch ferociously; the good words, like “adorable” or “cool” or “sweet”, feel warm and comforting.

So Sadie is looking for a way to transcend her bad luck or even change it into good luck, while Elyse is just trying to survive or avoid the bad words people throw at her and glean lots more compliments and good words. Both of these problems speak to fears that middle schoolers (and many adults) often have: What if I’m just a born loser? What if I never do get into the “cool kids crowd”? Do I really want to be cool? On the other hand, do I want to see myself, and have others see me, as a pathetic outcast for the rest of my life? It’s the basic “Who am I really?” question. (By the way, there’s a black cat that figures prominently in Fortune Falls, but said cat has a bobbed tail. Cover error!)

Sadie answers the questions both by finding a little luck along the way and by accepting her luckless self as she is. These two solutions conflict somewhat and really beg the question. Sadie says she’s OK because she managed to work within the rigged system and grab some luck or because she believes she’s OK, and that’s enough. Elyse answers the “who am I really?” question by accepting her words, both good and bad, and by deciding not to apply bad words to herself. I’m not sure the resolution in either story is adequate. Bad words can hurt, even if you’re determined to not internalize them. And bad luck, in a town like Fortune Falls where luck is a real thing, could really damage or even kill.

Both Sadie and Elyse have friend issues, issues with “mean girls”, and boyfriend issues—all in the sixth grade. Sticks and Stones, in particular, has a heavy, heavy emphasis on sixth graders dating, even though it’s pretty tame dating, holding hands, kissing, breaking up, going steady, not at all what I would like to see sixth graders worrying about. Stereotypical “mean girls” are in both books. In Sticks and Stones, Elyse’s best friend joins the mean girls clique for no discernible reason. Both books have lots of name-calling. A sort of/kind of therapeutically good ending doesn’t make up for all the angst (at 12!) in the middle. I think sixth grade is way too young for the boyfriend/dating thing to figure so prominently in the stories, but it’s more and more of a theme in middle grade fiction. I don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg, but eleven and twelve year olds are too young to have boyfriends and dates and jealousy over boys and breaking up and going steady. If it’s happening anyway in sixth grade, we need to discourage, not encourage, it.

Aside from the boyfriend/girlfriend nonsense, these are readable and serviceable, not for my library, but you may get better mileage than I did.

Rise of the Ragged Clover is the third, and I assume final, book in the Luck Uglies series. It’s been a good story from the beginning. Riley (Rye) O’Chanter and her family and friends fight against unnumbered foes, including the corrupt Earl Morningwig Longchance and his family, a multitude of Bog Noblins, the treacherous Fork-Tongue Charmers, and in this new book, Shriek Reavers and a River Wyvern. In an uneasy coalition with the Luck Uglies, outlaws who protect the town of Drowning, sometimes, Rye and her friends try to protect the weak and the innocent, but end up in dangerous and morally ambiguous situations over and over again until the final climax of the story has Rye face an impossible choice: let the Bog Noblins destroy Drowning or drown the town in a flood that might kill everyone anyway.

I really did like the story, but the moral ambiguity and ends-justify-the-means reasoning was too much for my sensibilities, which have admittedly been scarred by this election season. However, these are some of the nuggets of “wisdom” that Rye’s father drops, and I just couldn’t help applying them to our own national leadership crisis. This kind of advice (moral relativism) has led us to where we are now.

“Sometimes only the bad guys can save you. Sometimes it takes a villain to save you from the monsters.”

I can’t help it. I’m reading: “Sometimes we have to vote for the lesser of two evils. Sometimes only a strong, bad, guy is strong enough to shake things up and save us from a really evil and worse fate.” Consequentialism, blech.

” . . . a leader’s choices are sometimes impossible ones. The right decision may not be the best, and the best decision can be both right and wrong. So a real hero can only follow her heart.”

And what if “her heart” leads her to justify the killing of unwanted babies or what if “his heart” says he must kiss every girl he is attracted to? What if the hero’s heart is desperately wicked and deceptive?

“That magic, your unique abilities, they’re already within each of you. All you needed was something to believe in. And sometimes it’s easier to believe in a charm or a totem than it is to believe in ourselves.”

Again with the believe in yourself/follow your heart Disney-esque advice. And if you find it difficult to believe that you are a god and your heart is always right, make yourself a harmless little idol to convince you of your own omnipotence.

Finally in the end, Rye makes the right decision about her future, but again it’s just based on her feelings. She doesn’t feel like becoming a tough outlaw chieftain in order to bring about good for the town, the Luck Uglies, and her friends:

“I don’t want to use fear as a weapon and struggle for power. I don’t want to be the one to lead the Luck Uglies out of the dark if it means I must first step into the shadows myself.”

But the contorted, murky, and turgid moral reasoning that comes before that fine declaration is not what I needed to read in this contorted, murky, and turgid swamp of a political season. And the story itself is morally ambiguous, wth the bad guys sometimes seemingly not so bad, or least there’s always something badd-er for the villains to fight against and thereby become somewhat redeemable. I needed clear, bright lines between good and evil, lucid and rational ethical thought, and a real hero who trusts in some standard besides her own heart. I tend to believe that we all need those things, especially kids, especially now.

Maybe the timing was wrong for me to read this book. Maybe (probably) I’m loading way too much baggage onto a middle grade fantasy novel. If you enjoyed the first two books in the series, you’ll probably like this one, too. I would suggest that you read the three books in the trilogy in order. There are a lot of characters and creatures to keep straight, and I don’t think jumping into the middle (or the last third) of the story will work well for this one.

My review of the first two book in the Luck Uglies series (in which I was bothered by the moral ambiguity of the novels).

“The most priceless possession of the human race is the wonder of the world. Yet, latterly, the utmost endeavors of mankind have been directed towards the dissipation of that wonder . . . Nobody, any longer, may hope to entertain an angel unawares, or to meet Sir Lancelot in shining armor on a moonlit road. But what is the use of living in a world devoid of wonderment?” ~Kenneth Grahame, epigraph at the beginning of Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard by Jonathan Auxier.

What indeed? Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard, a sort of companion novel to Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes, is full of wonderment and adventure and storytelling and friendship and bravery and magic. The antagonists in the book either want squash nonsense (stories, magic, wonder) or to use the magic for nefarious and selfish purposes. Sophie, a twelve year old book mender and reader of all sorts of stories, wants to preserve and guard the stories, which brings me to my only quibble with this book itself. Sophie finds out fairly early in the story that she is the Last Storyguard, so I’m not sure why the book is called Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard. I guess the symmetry with Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes was too much to resist.

Peter Nimble does return to play a major role in this novel. He is Sophie’s rescuer, even when she doesn’t want to be rescued, her helper, especially when the skills of a Master Thief are called for, and her admirer, although the admiration is abashed and from afar. Peter Nimble is accompanied by the intrepid Sir Tode, part cat, part horse, part human, and Sophie picks up her own sidekick along the way, an enormous silver tigress named Akrasia. Together these friends adventure across the Grimmwald and through the city of Bustleburgh to stop the villains who are planning to stop, destroy and immolate all nonsense (stories, magic, wonder, books!).

I found this book to be thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking. The themes, implied in the Grahame epigraph, and demonstrated throughout the story, have to do with the power of stories and the need for magic, good and bad, and wonder, in a life that is worth the living. The book never comes out and says so, but one of the ideas that I gleaned was that it is necessary to have choices and villains to fight and goodness to aspire to for our stories to make sense. For reasons we do not, perhaps cannot, fully understand, it is God’s plan for the wheat and the tares to grow together until the judgment day (see Matthew 13:24-30). Maybe I’m getting too philosophical in response to a children’s fantasy book, but that’s the way my mind works.

Enjoy the story. Guard the stories. After all, what is the use of living in a world devoid of wonderment?

Sincerely,

Sherry Early, Bookmender, Preservationist, Librarian, Storyguard.