I feel a little sorry for books published in 2020 or 2021. The opportunities for publicity and recognition and even borrowing from libraries was, well, restricted, as were all things by the Big C. Dayna Lorentz’s middle grade novel about a boy and a coyote is worth a look, even when most reviewers have moved on to the new books of 2022.
Wayward Creatures is about two wayward creatures: twelve year old Gabe and a coyote named Rill. Gabe is entering seventh grade with a family distracted by economic problems and friends who spend all their time on competitive soccer and have no time for him. Gabe, trying desperately to impress his erstwhile friends, does something very stupid and destructive and ends up having to pay the consequences.
Rill, a somewhat anthropomorphized coyote, does something stupid, too. She leaves her pack–father mother, younger sisters and brothers–because she doesn’t feel appreciated. Gabe’s life and Rill’s intersect when Gabe is cleaning up the forest as a part of the restorative justice process. The book is steeped in the ideas of restorative justice, and there’s an author’s note at the end that explains what that is and how it works. Nevertheless, the ideas of animal control and habitat preservation and anger management and restorative justice, while they are a major part of the novel, never get in the way of the story, but rather become a natural part of the tale of one boy and one coyote.
I tend to still think that coyotes are mostly pests, but I’m at least willing now to give them the benefit of the doubt. And I think the ideas of restorative justice, which I first encountered in the writings of Chuck Colson, are certainly a much-needed tool that can be used to improve our criminal justice system and should be more widely implemented. That said, this book is a good story, not propaganda, and I did like the Gabe parts better than I liked the Rill the coyote parts of the book. My attitude towards coyotes may have worked itself up to tolerance: if they don’t bother me, I’ll try not to bother them.
The Beatryce Prophecy by Kate DiCamillo. My second favorite. At the monastery of the Order of the Chronicles of Sorrowing. Brother Edik finds the girl, Beatryce, curled in a stall, wracked with fever, covered in dirt and blood, and holding on to the ear of Answelica the goat. (Answelica is the stubborn star of the book.) It turns out that the king’s men are searching for Beatryce, but Beatryce doesn’t remember who she is or why the king wants to capture her. Can she elude the search long enough to recover her own story?
Stowaway by John David Anderson. A little bit Star Wars and a little bit Ender’s Game or even Dune, Stowaway takes space opera into the middle grade fiction genre and does it well. When Leo is separated from his father and his older brother and lost in space with a bunch of space pirates, he truly doesn’t know whom to trust. But he’s determined to find his father who has been kidnapped (maybe?) by the enemy Djarik soldiers. Can he trust the pirates to help him? Are the Aykari, Earth’s allies in the universal war to control the valuable mineral ventasium, even trustworthy? Can Leo be smart enough to get to his father beforetime runs out, and can he find his brother, too?
First there are the re-reads: Hannah Coulter, That Hideous Strength, and Mansfield Park. Hannah Coulter was just as good as I remembered it. This fictional memoir of an old woman remembering her life and the lives of her children made me think about my grown children and how their lives have taken such different turns and directions from what I expected. Russell Moore writes about “why you should read Hannah Coulter”, and I second his motion.
“Most people now are looking for a ‘better place’, which means that a lot of them will end up in a worse one. . . . There is no ‘better place’ than this, not in this world. and it is by the place we’ve got, and our love for it, and keeping of it, that this world is joined to heaven.”
~Hannah Coulter, p. 83
I re-read all three of Lewis’s space trilogy books this year: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. I must say that I enjoyed That Hideous Strength the most of the three, whereas previously I thought Perelandra was my favorite. That Hideous Strength is just so prophetic. How did Lewis know that men and women would become so confused about gender roles or that mixing Christianese (talk) with pagan concepts would become such a problem? Or that many would move past naturalistic materialism straight into the occult? Just like 1984 by George Orwell, which I understand was written partially as a response to Lewis’s book, That Hideous Strength is full of images and ideas that speak directly to today’s issues: the manipulation of the press/media, police brutality and accountability, psychological techniques used for rehabilitation, crime and punishment, education, gender roles, procreation or the lack thereof, and much more. I read That Hideous Strength with Cindy Rollins’ Patreon group, and we had lots of good discussion about all of these ideas.
The Death of Ivan Ilych and Reunion were two more books I read along with the Literary Life podcast folks (Angelina Stanford, Thomas Brooks, and Cindy Rollins), and I’m sure I enjoyed them extra-specially because of the podcast discussions. Both books are novellas, rather than full length novels, and both are well worth your time.
“He felt that he was trapped in such a mesh of lies that it was difficult to make sense out of anything. Everything she did for him was done strictly for her sake; and she told him she was doing for her sake what she actually was, making this seem so incredible that he was bound to take it to mean just the reverse.”
~The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham was a book read back in February, about a woman torn between fidelity to a seemingly loveless marriage and adultery with a seemingly exciting and passionate man. The keyword is “seemingly.” I didn’t review this book, but here’s a review at Educating Petunia that includes thoughts on the movie version as well. I think I’d like to watch the movie sometime, and I was reminded of this reading project that I’d like to restart in 2022. So many projects, so little persistence.
“You know, my dear child, that one cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one’s soul.”
~The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham
Our Mutual Friend was my Dickens novel for the year, and although it’s not my favorite Dickens, any book by Dickens stands head and shoulders above the pack. I also watch duh mini-series of OMF and enjoyed that quite a bit. I plan to read Hard Times (with the Literary Life folks) and maybe re-read David Copperfield (my favorite Dickens novel) in 2022.
“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else.”
Our Mutual Friend, Mr. Rokesmith
I discovered Naomi Novik’s fantasy novels early in 2021, both Spinning Silver and her Temeraire series about Napoleonic era dragons and men working together to defeat Napoleon and remake the world, especially England, as a comfortable and welcoming place for friendly working dragons. These book are just fun, and if you like adult fantasy, with some non-explicit hanky-panky going on (not the focus of the novels), then I recommend these.
I also read Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive trilogy in early 2021 while I was coughing with Covid, beginning with The Way of Kings. It was good, absorbing, with lots of good character development and plot twists that I didn’t see coming. This author is so prolific, more than thirty, mostly huge, sprawling novels published, that I will never read all of his books, but I may dip back in again to his Cosmere (fantasy world), from time to time. The following quote was particularly timely:
“There are worse things . . . than a disease. When you have one, it reminds you that you’re alive. Makes you fight for what you have. When the disease has run its course, normal healthy life seems wonderful by comparison.”
Brightness Shallon in The Way of Kings, p. 506
Fanny Price and Mansfield Park. I knew I had read Mansfield Park before, but all I could remember was the play-within-a-novel that turns into a disaster. I initially found both the book and the protagonist somewhat lackluster and plodding, but the more I read, and the more I listened to The Literary Life podcast episodes about the book, the more I grew to love Fanny. I can only aspire to the humility and servanthood that she exemplifies. (Aspiring to humility is something of an oxymoron, but it actually makes sense in a Chestertonian sort of way.) Anyway, I would like to be able to keep my mouth shut more often as Fanny does and to think of myself less and others more. I think that sort of attitude comes by practice, though, and it’s hard to be willing to practice humility.
So, what are the themes that emerge from all this fictional reading? Endure hardship patiently. And brighten the corner where you are. If I could learn these two lessons, deep in my soul, by means of story or situational experience, I’d be, well, certainly better, farther along the path to virtue. Not that I read to become virtuous, but stories do seep into the soul.
What fiction formed your life in 2021? What novel(s) will you be reading in 2022?
Problem novels are those in which a prevailing social problem, such as racial or class prejudice, mental illness, poverty, or something else, is dramatized through its effect on the characters of a novel. These kinds of novels are popular in middle grade realistic fiction because they are supposed to help children understand and cope with these issues and problems. I dunno. Sometimes the story itself transcends the problem-of-the-week genre, sometimes not.
Anyway, I read, and for the most part enjoyed, the following problem novels published in 2021:
Carry Me Home by Janet Fox. Issue: Homelessness. Twelve year old Lulu and her little sister Serena are living in a Suburban parked in a trailer park with their Daddy. Mama died of cancer. When Daddy doesn’t come to pick them up from after school care one day, Lulu must take care of Serena by herself while keeping the secret of their homelessness and abandonment from the authorities since Lulu is sure that if anyone finds out about their plight the girls will be separated and never find their Daddy again. The chapters alternate between “now” and “before” and “way before”, telling about Lulu’s struggle to provide for herself and her sister and about the family’s backstory of how they came to be homeless and alone. At 193 pages, it’s short, sweet, and ultimately encouraging in showing that there are people in the world who can be trusted and who will help.
Breathing Underwater by Sarah Allen. Issue: Depression, helping a family member who is mentally ill. Thirteen year old Olivia is sure that this road trip from Tennessee to California along with the photographs that Olivia will capture with her new camera along the way will be the keys to helping her older sister Ruth remember the happiness that the sisters used to share. Taking pictures and making memories as well as unearthing the time capsule the two sisters buried years before just must be enough to shake Ruth out of her depression and make her smile. The trip doesn’t quite turn out the way Olivia plans, and I must admit to mixed feelings about this book that didn’t turn out exactly the way I wanted. The theme is personal for me since I have family members who deal with depression, and like Olivia, I’m not sure how to go about loving or caring for or even talking to them sometimes. So, while I didn’t find this story to be, well, depressing, I also didn’t find any great revelations here. I did identify with Olivia and her desire to help as well as her fear of saying the wrong thing or not saying the right thing. And I did want to shake the negativity and moodiness and self-destructive behaviors right out of Ruth (not a solution, I know).
Paradise on Fire by Jewell Parker Rhodes. Issue: Trauma recovery. Aduago (A-DAH-go, Addy, for short) is haunted by her incomplete memories of the fire that she escaped as a young child but that killed her parents. Her grandmother guardian sends Addy to a wilderness summer camping program out west that is supposed to introduce black inner city teens to the joys and dangers of living close to nature. I hated the writing style in this novel. The sentences are short and choppy and fragmentary. Lots of sentence fragments. Survival skills. Addy is growing. Then comes the fire. (You get the idea.) But the story itself, inspired by the Camp Fire in 2018 that destroyed the town of Paradise, California, is compelling. If you can get used to the way it’s written, you might really like this book, especially if you like survival stories.
Boy, Everywhere by A.M. Dassu and World In Between by Kenan Trebincevic. Issue: refugee resettlement.Boy, Everywhere “chronicles the harrowing journey taken from Syria to the UK by Sami and his family, from privilege to poverty, across countries and continents, from a smuggler’s den in Turkey to a prison in Manchester, England.” World In Between, based on the author’s own experiences, tells about Kenan’s journey from Bosnia to the United States. Both books are decently written, worth reading to get different insights into the refugee experience. But neither book is nearly as memorable as last year’s Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri.
Playing the Cards You’re Dealt by Varian Johnson. Issues: gambling addiction, family secrets. I feel as if Varian Johnson is a good writer who just hasn’t quite hit his stride. This story of a boy, Anthony–Ant for short, who has a family legacy to uphold in the annual community spades tournament is good, but just not great. (Spades is a card game, by the way.) The reveal about the story’s narrator at the end of the book is clever, and Ant is a believable and lovable character. It’s a lot like Louis Sachar’s book, The Cardturner, but I liked Sachar’s book better because it didn’t feature a problem-of-the-week to be solved.
Warning: this book ends with the main characters setting off on a new quest to save a life. So, it’s the beginning of a series, the Thieves of Shadow Novels, and although the story itself is tied up in a somewhat satisfying way, the ending is only a beginning.
That said, I enjoyed Children of the Fox. It reminded me of Megan Whalen Turner’s Thief series, and I would definitely recommend Children of the Fox to fans of Turner’s novels. If references to pagan gods, in this case Shuna the Fox Spirit and Artha the Bear Spirit, and spooky magic mediated by a jeweled Eye, are bothersome to you, you won’t like this story at all. I take these things as story, not as invitations to the occult, but your convictions may be different.
A group of children are hired to steal the powerful magical artifact, The Eye, from the palace of the most powerful sorcerer in the country because the adults have failed to even get close, and this heist can only be performed by children. The team consists of Callan, the gaffer or conman, Oran, the muscle, Meriel, the knife-thrower and charmer, Gareth, the scholar, Lachlan, the scrounger, and Foxtail, a masked and mute mystery girl who can climb walls and infiltrate fortresses. As well as being skilled at thievery, the children are all survivors of trauma, and that means that learning to trust each other and work as a team may be the hardest part of the job.
Why does Mr. Solomon, the children’s recruiter and employer, want The Eye? Why is he willing to pay so much money to get it? How did the adult thieves who already tried to steal The Eye fail? Why did one of those adult thieves lose his sanity in the attempt? How can each of the children use his or her particular skills to contribute to a successful heist? Can the team encounter and deal with magic without getting burned? And what will they do with all that money if they do succeed?
Kevin Sands, author of the Blackthorn Key Adventures (I read the first book in this series, but decided not to continue), has written an intriguing start to a new fantasy adventure series. I’m looking forward to the next book in the series, Seekers of the Fox, due to be published in 2022.
I’ve enjoyed Donna Jo Napoli’s books in the past; the author blurb says she’s published more than eighty books for children in her long career. Most of the ones I’ve read have been fairy tale and folk tale retellings (The Wager and Zel) or historical adventure tales (Alligator Bayou and North and Song of the Magdalene). Ms. Napoli, a professor of linguistics and social justice at Swarthmore College, is a good writer. Her books tend to fall toward the upper end of the middle grade fiction age group, maybe even pushing into young adult. In a Flash has a child narrator/protagonist, eight years old at the beginning of the story, but the subject matter and setting, the horrible plight of two Italian sisters surviving on their own in WWII Japan (1940-1946), is harrowing enough to call for some maturity in the reader. I was appalled by the suffering that SImona and her little sister Carolina undergo, and I’m a grown up who knew what to expect when the children, toward the end of the story, end up in the city of Hiroshima.
Because the chapter headings have dates affixed at the beginning and the book is written in first person from Simona’s point of view, I thought at first that the author was trying to pretend that this was SImona’s diary or journal. However, the writing isn’t a child’s writing, and the story is told mostly in present tense. Neither of those choices works for a diary entry. So, I soon realized that the dates were just there to assist the reader in knowing how much time had passed between chapters and where the children were in terms of age and in regard to the war. I found the story fascinating, a little slow-moving at first, but the details about life in Tokyo and in Japan as a whole were vivid and enlightening. The cultural differences between Japanese manners, language, and expectations and Italian cultural mores manifest themselves through the eyes of two little girls who struggle to live as the Japanese do while remembering that they are also Italians.
As I indicated, the book doesn’t shy away from the gruesome details of the starvation, fear, political repression, and sheer misery and trauma of living in wartorn Japan, especially as hated Westerners, Italians who were at first welcomed as friends of the Japanese, then despised as traitors after Italy’s surrender to the Allies. The suffering of the common people of Japan, as well as the choice of some of them to resist the suicidal “patriotism” required of them, are also portrayed in the story.
Because of all the suffering and bombing and starvation and imprisonment, the novel read like a Holocaust story, but with a very different setting. I would recommend In a Flash for mature young people who have been reading about the horrors of World War II as a different perspective and view of the atrocities and difficulties of that time.
Ten year old Anthony Joplin (Ant for short) has a family reputation to uphold: he needs to win the junior division of the annual spades tournament, just like his brother Aaron and his dad before him. When Ant’s best friend and spades partner, Jamal. gets in a fight and gets grounded, Ant needs a new partner. And he has a an idea of who that could be: the new girl, Shirley, from Texas.
Unfortunately for Ant and Shirley, there’s a lot more happening in Ant’s family and at school than just preparations for the spades tournament. Ant’s dad is struggling with the losing business in his accounting firm, the kids at school are teasing Ant for partnering with a girl, Jamal is talking trash and being plain mean, and Ant just wants everything to settle down and let him play his best game. And when Dad asks Ant to keep a big secret, who can Ant talk to? His brother Aaron who’s away at school? Or Jamal? Or his new friend Shirley?
Varian Johnson tells a good story about a Black family in crisis, but also a family that’s strong enough to deal with the problems they face. Ant’s dad is struggling with more than just work and finances, and while the gambling and alcohol issues that Dad has are dealt with compassionately, the Joplin family (and ultimately the author) still hold Dad responsible for recognizing his problems and getting help to deal with them. Ant has to face his own issues of wanting to be liked and recognized more than he wants to be a friend sometimes, but he eventually realizes that his dad’s problems are not something that Ant can be responsible for or solve.
I liked the book. There is a bit of a ghostly presence in the background of the story, a narrator who pops into the story off and on, but he’s not too intrusive. And there’s a lot of strategy for playing spades embedded in to the story, which I enjoyed but it may be off-putting to some who are not so familiar with the card game. Overall, it’s a good solid novel about playing cards and family secrets and learning how to deal.
This take-off on Barrie’s Peter Pan with Native American characters (to correct the portrayal of “injuns” in Barrie’s story) starts off great. The characters, twelve year old sisters, Wendy and Lily, and their little four year old brother, Matthew, are complex and engaging. Their family dynamics and structure are a little bit confusing: Wendy and Lily are step-sisters, and Matthew shares a mother with Lily and a father with Wendy. (There’s also an older brother, John, who remains a minor background character.) Lily and Matthew both have Native American heritage, while Wendy is of British extraction. This ethnic heritage is emphasized in the story, partly to counteract the unfavorable characterization of Native Americans in Barrie’s original story.
Anyway, diversity aside, the story is exciting, and the themes of family bonding and dealing with anxiety and responding with grace to change are well handled without becoming too preachy. Although divorce is a possibility—the girls’ parents aren’t getting along well—no one reading this book will feel as if they are being duped into a “book therapy” session. Peter Pan in this iteration is a self-absorbed bully, but again his characterization is a part of the story, not an exercise in the psychology of bullies.
I thoroughly enjoyed the story, and I was completely absorbed in figuring out how Wendy and Lily were going to save Matthew from becoming one of the Lost Boys and how they were all going to escape from Neverland. I wanted to know what would happen to Peter. Would he reform and grow into maturity or remain a selfish tyrant in Neverland? Would his shadow come back to him? Could the Native children on one side of the island, the Lost Boys on the other side, and the pirates in their ship, not to mention the innumerable, mostly invisible, fairies, ever come to terms and be at peace with one another? Was Neverland big enough for all of these groups, or would someone need to “leave town”, so to speak.
BUT just FYI, although it’s well written and engaging, about halfway through, the author introduces a minor character named Terri who goes out of her way to tell the reader that she is “two-spirit”. What in the world? The book never explains what the designation “two-spirit” is supposed to mean (not even in the author’s note at the end), and the Wikipedia article is more confusing than illuminating. But I gather that it’s some sort of alternative gender designation, and it was totally unnecessary to the story for Terri to be introduced with that identity. I found it to be confusing and propagandistic. As you can see, by my need to look it up and then try to understand what purpose the two-spirit identity had in the story, that particular passage, a very minor part of a good story, completely threw me out of the narrative. I think children will either skim over it or be similarly confused and inquisitive.
If “two-spirit” indicates a kind of third or fourth or whatever number alternative gender, the gender confusion that is rampant in our society at this particular juncture in history doesn’t need to be inserted into children’s literature. If it’s an indicator of some sort of Native American spirituality, the lack of an explanation doesn’t serve the reader or the story. In fact, this propaganda unfortunately rather spoils the entire story.
First of all, I have a prejudice in favor of books set in Texas, as long as the Texas culture and history is authentic. Once Upon a Camel, set in my native West Texas, is spot on. Secondly, I absolutely loved Kathi Appelt’s The Underneath and thought it should have won a Newbery Award a few years ago. However, not everyone agreed with me. So you may or may not agree with me that Once Upon a Camel is in the top tier of middle grade fiction published in 2021.
The novel is similar in style to The Underneath, but as I said, it’s set in West Texas, not East. And it features an aging, storytelling camel and a family of kestrels caught in a haboob, a giant, overwhelmingly destructive, dust storm. I loved the storytelling and the way it was woven into the greater story. I loved the kindness and courage exhibited by the animal characters.
The animals are anthropomorphized, but they also stay true to their animal nature for the most part. Zada, the camel, is sometimes loud, nurturing as an honorary auntie, and fond of racing (at least, she was a racer in her youth), and not so fond of horses. The kestrel couple, Pard and Perlita, are fierce and loyal and persistently loving. The baby kestrels, Wims and Beulah, are, well, they are babies, much like human children, quarrelsome yet tender with each other, impulsive, prone to getting into trouble, yet definitely lovable. Even the mountain lion, Pecos de Leon, is only a little bit scary and ominous, and he, too is susceptible to the calming influence of a good story.
Zada’s stories come from her history, and they’re the kind of stories that humans would tell in family groups or in communities. They are family stories, and the book is yet another iteration of the theme that “stories will save the world.” In the author’s note at the end of the book, Ms. Appelt writes:
“In these days of so much anger and division, it’s more important than ever that we take time to share our stories, which at their most basic level tie us to each other in fundamental ways. After all we’ve been gathering around campfires and kitchen tables for thousands of years and doing just that. We are, all of us, story beasts, made to tell stories, built for them.”
p. 321
I highly recommend that you make your acquaintance with Zada, the camel, and that you read her stories and the story of the haboob and how Zada and her friends survived in it. We’ve all been experiencing our own massive “dust storms” through the past couple of years, and perhaps a fictional West Texas camel can help us find our own survival strategies. And even if there are no profound lessons to be learned from Zada, a little humor and a light story never hurt in the midst of a storm.
Rigel and her family live in the Bush, off the grid, in rural Alaska. People call them Bush rats. They don’t have TV, or cell phones, or computers, or cars, or indoor plumbing. But Rigel (RYE-jul) and her dad, Bear, love what they do have: hunting and fishing, family, solitude, open country, freedom.Now, that’s all going to change, for Rigel at least, because Bear and Rigel’s mom, Lila, got a divorce. And Lila is taking the girls—Willow, Izzy, and Rigel–to Connecticut to live with Lila’s mom, their grandmother. The other two girls are excited about the move, but not Rigel. She loves being a Bush rat, and when Bear tells Rigel that she can probably come back to Alaska if she can just make it through the year in Connecticut, Rigel starts counting the days.
At first, this book reminded me of The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah, a book I read earlier this year. It has the dysfunctional family, the eccentric father, the long-suffering mom who finally gets enough, living off-grid and off the land, the daughter who grows up in this environment, Alaska as both harsh and idyllic. However, since this book is middle grade fiction, the dad is never abusive or downright crazy like the father in The Great Alone. And most of the story in 365 Days to Alaska takes place in Connecticut, not Alaska, although Rigel does spend a lot of time thinking about Alaska and how she can get back to Alaska.
I thought this was a fascinating look at how our environment and upbringing shape us–both for good and for ill. THere’s a sort of story with in the story about how Rigel tames, or almost tames, an injured crow and how that’s not necessarily a good thing. Wild creatures need to keep their will instincts to survive. Otherwise, they become dependent on humans and vulnerable to exploited or accidentally injured or even killed. Is this a parallel to Rigel’s story? Is she losing her edge and instinct for survival as she becomes more and more acclimated to Connecticut and as she begins to trust people there? Or are humans meant to live in community, even when that makes us vulnerable to hurt? Is there a good compromise between total freedom to live without restrictions and living in community and friendship with others?
This debut novel doesn’t really answer those questions, but it did make think about how we live both together and alone. I think this book would be an excellent story for children of divorced parents, for middle schoolers who have trouble finding their tribe, and for those who just enjoy a good story with ideas to ponder.
