This novel is a fictionalized biography of the Elizabethan poet John Donne, one of my favorite poets. Wikipedia speaks of the “strong, sensual style” and “abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations” in Donne’s poetry, and I tend to enjoy the surprises and disconcerting changes that appear in much of Donne’s poetry.

Donne himself was a courtier, trying for most of his life to find an influential and rich patron who would make his fortune and get him the appointments he needed for a diplomatic career. He rather spoiled his chances such a career when he fell in love with the niece, Anne More, of his patron and employer, Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Queen Elizabeth I. Donne, who was pushing thirty, and Anne, still a teenager, secretly married, and when the marriage was discovered, Donne got fired from his position with Sir Thomas and Anne’s father disowned the pari and tried to have their marriage declared invalid. Oh, and John Donne spent a short time in prison where he wrote a succinct poem about his fate:

John Donne

Anne Donne

undone.

John and Anne went on to spend most of their sixteen years of married life in financial difficulties. Donne wrote both prose and poems, sometimes for pay and sometimes to get the attention of those he hoped would advance his career. Anne gave birth to twelve children in sixteen years, two of them stillborn. The couple, as portrayed in the book and seemingly in real life, remained deeply in love despite their difficult circumstances until Anne died in 1617, five days after giving birth to a stillborn baby.

I kept waiting as I read the story of Donne’s life for John Donne to experience Christian conversion of some sort and to become an Anglican priest. I knew that he did become a minister and a believer at some point. It turns out that Donne only became a cleric finally because James I practically ordered him to do so. Donne had no other way to support his growing family, so he was ordained in 1615, only a couple of years before the death of his wife.

This novel has Donne’s actual conversion coming after Anne’s death in the very last chapter of the book. You can tell from his poetry, especially his Holy Sonnets, and from some of his sermons that he truly did trust in the Lord for forgiveness and salvation (or else he was an awfully good faker). I remember going to see a play about John Donne’s life many years ago when Engineer Husband and I were dating. I also remember watching the movie version of the Pulitzer prize winning play, Wit with Emma Thompson as the main character, an English professor who is dying of ovarian cancer and what also has a predilection for the poetry of John Donne.

Other posts about John Donne and his poetry:

• A Valediction Forbidding Mourning by John Donne, 1611
• Holy Sonnet X (Death Be Not Proud) by John Donne
• The Sunne Rising by John Donne
• Song (Go and Catch a Falling Star) by John Donne
• Hymn to God, My God, in my Sickness by John Donne
• Poetry and sermons of John Donne
• The End of the Alphabet, Wit and John Donne

Urchin of the Riding Stars (The Mistmantle Chronicles, Book 1) by M.I. McAllister.

The Goodreads blurb on this this book calls it “an epic, Shakespearian story of murder, treachery and revenge,” and I can see that. The themes and plot of Macbeth in particular are obviously present. However, I think my expectations were a little too high from all of the many recommendation I’ve seen for this series. It was decent fantasy fiction, similar to the Redwall book or S.D. Smith’s Green Ember series, but the writing and the plot development were not as good as I expected them to be. It’s not described in detail, but there is murder (of animal characters) and what I would call demon possession, although those words aren’t used in the book, and “culling” (killing) of inferior or weak newborn animals, so beware of giving this book to sensitive readers.

Urchin is a squirrel born on the Night of the Riding Stars. I’m not sure what “riding stars” are but maybe some kind of meteor shower? At any rate, the Night of the Riding Stars always portends some major event on the island of Mistmantle where squirrels, otters, moles, and hedgehogs live in harmony under the beneficent rule of their king, a hedgehog. When Urchin grows up and comes to serve in the castle, things start to go south. His mentor and master, Crispin the squirrel, takes the fall for the murder of the child prince, and when Crispin is exiled, Urchin and his new masters the otter Padra, must find out who the real murderer is and save the kingdom from an evil plot to overthrow the king. The villain of the piece is truly evil, and the good guys muddle about rather dimly trying to stop him.

I am hoping that the series improves with the second book, Urchin and the Heartstone. There are five books in this series, and I have the first three in my library. I am told that books four and five are not only out of print, but also very difficult to find as affordable, used books. The entire series is available for Kindle, however.

In 2019 Booklist published their list of the “50 Best Middle Grade Novels of the 21st Century.” Go ahead, take a look.

They left off Harry Potter, Wimpy Kid, and Percy Jackson because they figured those already had enough attention. (I would leave off two of the three for reasons of poor quality and over-exposure, and HP for the reason they state.) They also “cheated” and included series as one book, so I plan to do the same. Anyway, I do have some reading background and expertise in this particular genre, and for your reading pleasure I thought I would give you my own list of the 50 Best Middle Grade Novels of the 21st Century (so far). There is some overlap between my list and Booklist’s list, so I’ll start with those books we agree on.

Booklist and Semicolon’s Best Books (14 selections):

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill. Algonquin, 2016.

Greenglass House by Kate Milford. Illus. by Jaime Zollars. Clarion, 2014.

Last Day on Mars by Kevin Emerson. HarperCollins/Walden Pond, 2017.

Lockwood & Co. series by Jonathan Stroud. Illus. by Kate Adams. Disney/Hyperion, 2012-2017. (5 titles)

The Mysterious Benedict Society series by Trenton Lee Stewart. Illus. by Carson Ellis and Diana Sudyka. Little, Brown/Megan Tingley, 2007-2012. (4 titles)

Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt. Clarion, 2011.

The Penderwicks series by Jeanne Birdsall. Knopf, 2005-2018. (5 titles)

Race to the Bottom of the Sea by Lindsay Eagar. Candlewick, 2017.

Rain Reign by Ann M. Martin. Feiwel and Friends, 2014.

The Ranger’s Apprentice series by John Flanagan. I’ve only read the first book in this series, but I do plan to read more. Recommended.

A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park. Clarion, 2001. Newbery Award winning story of an orphan boy who wants to become a potter. Tree-Ear, named for a wild mushroom that grows without seed, lives under a bridge with his friend and mentor, Crane-man. His friend’s shriveled and twisted leg and foot makes him unable to work, and the two manage to eat and hold body and soul together by foraging among the garbage heaps. Then, Tree-Ear gets a job—and a dream of leaving the fringes of 12th century Korean society to become an artisan.

The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread by Kate DiCamillo. Illus. by Timothy Basil Ering. Candlewick, 2003.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. Random/Wendy Lamb, 2009.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon series by Grace Lin. Little, Brown, 2009-2016. (3 titles)

Then, Betsy Bird at Fuse #8 chimed in with the substitutions and changes she would make to the list.

Fuse #8 and Semicolon’s Best Books (3 selections):

Rules by Cynthia Lord.

A Drowned Maiden’s Hair by Laura Amy Schlitz. Historical fiction about Maud, an orphan, who is adopted out-of-the-blue by two elderly sisters. Her new guardians lavish her with new clothes on their way home to their large home, but then make her hide in the attic when guests come. They have a plan for Maud to help them in their spiritualism business, but Maud may be more than the sister bargained for.

Ghost by Jason Reynolds.

And, these are my selections—33 more books that I think are outstanding and will stand the test of time:

Heart of a Shepherd by Roseanne Parry.

Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce.

The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson. (On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, North! Or Be Eaten, The Monster in the Hollows, The Warden and the Wolf King) Waterbrook/Rabbit Room Press, 2008-2014.

The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd. 2008.

The Underneath by Kathi Appelt.

Alvin Ho series by Lenore Look.

The Casson Family series by Hilary McKay. (Saffy’s Angel, Indigo’s Star, Permanent Rose, Caddie Ever After, Forever Rose) Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2002-2008.

Maggie Valley novels by Kerry Madden. (Gentle’s Holler, Louisiana’s Song, Jessie’s Mountain)

Leepike Ridge by N.D. Wilson. Random House, 2007.

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park.

Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier.

The Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle by Christopher Healy.

Boys Without Names by Kashmira Sheth. Eager to find work after his hungry family arrives in Mumbai, 11-year-old Gopal ends up locked in a one-room “factory” making beaded frames with five other boys so beaten down they don’t even talk to one another. The boys have no names because their boss manipulates them to distrust one another in the interest of keeping them in slavery. Heart-rending, but never preachy, and ultimately hopeful.

Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins. Charlesbridge, 2010.

Anything But Typical by Nora Leigh Baskin.

A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban.

Clementine books by Sara Pennypacker.

Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson.

Books of Bayern by Shannon Hale. (The Goose Girl, Enna Burning, etc.)

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo.

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander.

The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic by Jennifer Trafton.

The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen. The Ascendance Trilogy.

The Luck Uglies series by Paul Durham.

Tuesdays at the Castle series by Jessica Day George.

War Horse by Michael Morpurgo.

Chasing Vermeer series by Blue Balliet.

The Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner.

Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley.

Isle of Swords by Thomas Wayne Batson.

Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm.

Any Which Wall by Laurel Snyder.

Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyce.

So, what do you think? What books would you add or take away from my list or Booklist‘s list? Or make your own list, and link in the comments.

Time Sight is a time travel or time-slip novel for middle graders in the tradition of Edward Eager’s Half Magic and Nesbit’s Five Children and It. The book is set in Scotland where Will and his little brother are sent to stay with relatives while Will’s father goes to find his mother who has been kidnapped while on a medical mission in a foreign country. Will discovers that in the country of his ancestors he has a special ability to see into other time periods and eventually step into the picture, so to speak, and enter those other times.

There are references to prayer and to God that are orthodox, Christian, and integrated into the plot and characterization in a way that didn’t stick out or seem awkward. The time travel was well thought out, and the rules for the time travel made sense, in a fantasy sort of way. Also, I liked that the writing itself wasn’t overdone or over-complicated. She didn’t try to be Tolkien in a book for ten and eleven year olds. (I love Tolkien’s writing, but I find a lot of middle grade authors trying to import his style and complexity of thought into middle grade novels where it doesn’t fit.) The setting was good, and I painlessly learned some things about Scottish history that I didn’t know before. I thought the historical time periods, settting and characters, were also well done with historical details and characters that seemed authentic. The notes in the back indicate that the author did her research.

Altogether, Time Sight was well written, well plotted, and absorbing. Will and his little brother Jamie and their Scottish cousin Nan are decent, thoughtful children who are coping with situations beyond their years in a way that makes sense and also gives rise to interesting questions and thoughts and growth for both readers and characters. Their adventures are fun to read about and educational to boot. Lynne Jonell tells us in the Afterword that she is related to the Scottish Menzies family that is featured in the book, and the family motto really is, being translated, “If God wills it, I shall do it.” The book is not a religious tract at all, and yet like A Wrinkle in Time and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the light of a Christian or Christian-influenced worldview shines through the pages of the story as it ends with the words, spoken by Will’s father, “That’s good to know. Light wins.”

This debut novel by Connecticut author Jeanne Ferruolo tells the story of Ruby Moon Hayes who has lost her father and whose mother has moved herself and Ruby from one place to another for over a year in search of the “forever home”. The pair finally end up in Fortin, Vermont, where almost immediately Mom is arrested for assault after standing up for her rights at her new job.

A moon motif runs throughout the story, and Ruby Moon learns to speak out and be brave as she adjusts to her new life in small town Vermont. The moon connects the story together just as it connected Ruby and her dad when they would both look at the moon when they were apart and remember each other. Ruby was a good character, with some growing and grieving issues, but because Ruby didn’t respect or obey her mom, I had trouble respecting her or rooting for her myself.

I didn’t always believe the actions of the townspeople, of Ruby’s friends Abigail and Ahmad, of Ruby’s mom, or of Ruby herself. I started out disliking the mom a lot or wondering if she had some kind of mental illness, but then the author tried to turn her into a hero and a role model for standing up for oneself. The townspeople were a bit too insular and prejudiced, stereotypical small-town hicks, to be believed. Ahmad was too good to be true, and Abigail was, as Ruby repeatedly calls her in the book, strange and weird. And still the story managed to tug at the heartstrings, so to speak. The themes of finding one’s own voice and learning to adapt and being brave are familiar, but they were worked out here in an engaging way.

I wish I could pinpoint what it was that moved me about this simple story. Ruby learns what it means to find a home. Ruby’s mom gets better, although I still thought she was awfully self-centered. Ahmad never moves beyond the stereotypical friendly Syrian refugee, but his friendship with Ruby serves the purpose of moving the story to its climax. And Ruby remains something of an enigma, even as she moves into healing and a new start in life. It’s a good story, but maybe not especially memorable?

I am not an animal lover, nor do I usually seek out animal stories in my reading life, although I’ve read my fair share of animal story classics: Old Yeller, Sounder, The Incredible Journey, Black Beauty, Rascal. Most of the classics involve people, too; most of the stories are about pets or domesticated animals.

A Wolf Called Wander is about a wolf, not a domesticated animal at all. When Wander the Wolf comes into contact with men, he is frightened and repulsed and confused by their strange actions. And most of the story is about Wander himself and his journey, not about human contacts or human concerns.

Wander is anthropomorphized somewhat in the book. He has a name as do his brothers and sisters: Pounce, Wag, Sharp, and Warm. Of course, he thinks in sentences and in English because the book is told from Wander’s point of view. Nevertheless, the story is based on the story of a real wolf, tagged OR-7 by biologists, fitted with a radio collar, and tracked on a journey from northeastern Oregon into northern California. Parry took OR-7’s migration journey and made it into a story about a wolf called Wander and his search for a home and a pack of his own.

And she did an excellent job. If you or your child is at all interested in wolves or in the lives of wild creatures in general, A Wolf Called Wander would be a great read. What other books can you think of that are told from the non-domesticated animal’s point of view, but mostly realistic and not very anthropomorphized (not a-boy-and-his-dog/cat/horse and not animals in clothing)? Here are a few that I thought of:

White Fang and Call of the Wild, both by Jack London. I have a plan to read one of London’s books, probably Call of the Wild, as well as a biography of London this month. I think these fit the category in my question, but I haven’t read them.

Bambi by Felix Salten. This classic is about the animals of the forest, especially the fawn Bambi, not about humans. However, the animals do think and “talk” to one another.

Watership Down by Richard Adams is about wild rabbits, but the rabbits do have an extensive mythology and a complicated social order and government. Their actions are mostly realistic, but their story is not.

Animal Stories: Realistic by C. Hollis Crossman at Exodus Books.

I knew of Margery Sharp as a children’s author who wrote the series of books about The Rescuers and Miss Bianca (although Wikipedia says that The Rescuers was originally meant for an adult audience?). However that may be, Ms. Sharp also wrote twenty-five other novels for adults as well as numerous short stories. Cluny Brown is one of Ms. Sharp’s adult novels, published in 1944, and not to be taken over by children. (It has a few mild expletives, and the characters are all grown up people, not mice.)

The novel takes place just before WWII in the late thirties. One of the characters says repeatedly that Europe is headed for war, but no one takes him too seriously. Instead of war or impending war, the atmosphere in the book is one of halcyon days in which there is time and mental space enough to pursue rather leisurely growing up and romance in the English countryside.

Cluny Brown is a London girl, an orphan, who is a puzzlement to her guardian plumber uncle and to all of her friends and neighbors in a working class neighborhood in London. She’s tall and plain, but on second or third glance rather striking in some undefinable way, and she has ideas “above her station”. These strange ideas of Cluny’s, such as her taking herself out to the Ritz for tea one afternoon, cause her uncle to worry, and eventually he decides to send Cluny “into service” as a maid.

Cluny ends up in Devon at Friars Carmel, the country home of Sir Henry and Lady Carmel. In an atmosphere reminiscent of Downton Abbey, although not so large or exalted, Cluny wreaks havoc by just being Cluny. She doesn’t do anything too shocking by today’s standards, but in the eyes of the English country villagers and lords and ladies and maids and butlers, Cluny is definitely an anomaly, an odd bird. She asks if she can keep a dog. (The answer is no. Maids don’t keep pets.) She talks to her employers as if she and they are all people, on common ground so to speak, not disrespectfully but as an equal.

Anyway, the book is basically a romance, and Cluny eventually does the thing that is the most shocking of all: she chooses her own husband and runs away with him. I thought this story was a nice little glimpse into British mores and changing times of the 1930’s, and it was fun to think that Cluny and her free ways were only the harbingers of a great deal of change and freedom (and license) very soon to come with the war.

A serial version of Cluny Brown appeared in the Ladies’ Home Journal, and made into a Hollywood film by Ernst Lubitsch in 1946, with Academy Award winner Jennifer Jones in the title role. Recommended for fans of Downton Abbey and Miss Reade novels and pre-WWII light English romances.

W.H. Auden supposedly said about responses to books, “For an adult reader, the possible verdicts are five: I can see this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don’t like it; I can see this is good, and, though at present I don’t like it, I believe with perseverance I shall come to like it; I can see that this is trash but I like it; I can see that this is trash and I don’t like it.“

Well, I hate to disagree with Mr. Auden, and I do think that those are all valid responses, but there are many others. What about the book that’s well-written in parts, but the parts don’t fuse into a whole? What about the response that this book is entertaining, not trash, but also not great or memorable literature? What about “this book is good, but it has some serious flaws, so I’m ambivalent?” I could think of many, many more nuanced responses to a piece of literature, and my evaluation of Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage falls somewhere between the cracks of Mr. Auden’s five verdicts.

Yes, the book is well written. Jones has a feel for the emotional tone and complexity of family and marriage relationships, and she writes about those differing emotional reactions and decisions with insight and understanding. However, the depiction of black men in particular plays into stereotypes that have been damaging in the past and that are sill perpetuated today: namely the idea that black men are oversexed, sexually promiscuous, and dangerous. The husband in our American marriage is promiscuous before marriage and unfaithful after the wedding. But he nevertheless expects the wife to be faithful and committed to him while he is wrongfully imprisoned for five years on a rape charge. This husband would never, never commit rape, but he doesn’t mind sleeping around. And he expects his marriage to withstand that kind of betrayal.

Do men really think like this? Maybe some do. But why would the author portray her “American marriage” as inconstant and unsteady from the beginning if the purpose of the novel is to examine that marriage’s strength when placed under the pressure of injustice and false imprisonment? If I wanted to write about a bad marriage where the guy is unfaithful from the get-go, then all the prison stuff would be superfluous. Or vice-versa.

I wanted to like and to learn from this novel, but in the end I found it disappointing. It just didn’t live up to the hype. However, I did like the ending. One of the main characters was somewhat redeemed in my eyes at the very end of the book.

Final verdict: Try it if you like to be up on the latest (or near-latest) culturally relevant American novels, but don’t expect too much. And skip over the sex scenes if you don’t like that kind of descriptive passage. Or just skip it.

The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus by Joshua Kendall.

I thought this biography of the author of Roget’s Thesaurus was full of interesting information interspersed between the author’s attempts to psychoanalyze Roget and all of his family members. He states lots of assumptions about Roget’s life as facts but then gives little or no evidence that those things are true. I liked the book because I learned a lot about Peter Mark Roget, but I often didn’t know what to trust.

For instance, the author states that Roget was self-centered and oblivious to the feelings and needs of others. Then he gives examples of how attentive and loving Roget was with his wife, Mary. I didn’t know what to think. Kendall states that Roget had an illicit sexual relationship with his daughter’s governess for many years after his wife’s death and that his family tried to hide this relationship, but he never says how he knows this to be so nor does he tell us why Roget, a religious man, would not have married the woman who was said to be his mistress. Maybe it’s all so, but I have questions.

I did like learning about how Roget influenced the development of the slide rule and how he loved the invention of his friend, the kaleidoscope. And I was amazed by the description of Roget’s discoveries in the science of optics, discoveries which led directly to the development of motion pictures about a century later. I enjoyed the story of how Roget as a young man escaped from Switzerland and the French authorities there when the Napoleonic Wars were heating up in 1803. I was sad to read about all the instances of mental distress and illness in Roget’s family and about his beloved uncle’s suicide. Altogether, I’m glad I read the book.

But I returned to Jen Bryant’s The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus after reading this adult biography, and I had a new appreciation for Bryant’s skill in distilling the essence of Roget’s life and accomplishments into a picture book. If you want a very brief introduction to Roget’s life, I suggest Bryant’s book. If you then want to know more, you can check out this biography or one of the others I found when I searched.

Peter Mark Roget: The Man Who Became a Book by Nick Rennison.

Peter Mark Roget: The Word and the Man by D.L. Emblen.

I did enjoy this quote from Kendall’s book that encapsulates Roget’s response to Darwin’s then-new theories about the origins of life and the purposes of natural history:

“In his ensuing discussion of plants and animals of every strip that comprised the remainder of the first volume (Bridgewater Treatise), Roget proceeded from the assumption that God has designed all their features in an ingenious way. Roget conceived of God as an artist; and his job as a natural historian was to discover and reveal the order in the work of art known as the universe.”

God the artist, indeed. Roget and I would agree on that assumption.

January 1: Ring Out Wild Bells by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from In Memoriam. On Close Reads, The Daily Poem.

January 2: When the Year Grows Old by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Listen on the Daily Poem podcast.

January 3: For Tolkien’s Birthday, A Walking Song by JRR Tolkien.

January 4: January by Folgore da San Geminiano, translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. This poem is a sonnet, originally written in Italian.

January 5: Great Is Thy Faithfulness by Thomas Chisholm.

January 6: Epiphany. Prayer to the Three Kings by Evelyn Waugh. We do need to pray for those who are “the learned, the oblique and the delicate”. It’s so hard for the rich man, rich in his own wisdom or money, to enter the kingdom of heaven.

January 7: Twelfth Night by Phyllis McGinley.

January 8: When Icicles Hang by the Wall by William Shakespeare, from Love’s Labor’s Lost, Act V, Scene 2.

January 9: At the Round Earth’s Imagin’d Corners by John Donne.

January 10: Monday by Billy Collins. I actually found this poem on the Facebook page for the Literary Life podcast, a podcast that I enjoy very much, hosted by Angelina Standford and Cindy Rollins. If you’re on Facebook or if you listen to podcasts, I recommend The Literary Life, the page and the podcast.

January 13: The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm by Wallace Stevens. I found this poem in the book I’m reading currently, The Shallows by Nicholas Carr.

January 14: A Garden by the Sea by William Morris.

January 15: California Winter by Karl Shapiro. I like the way this poem looks at California in the winter and compares/contrasts/places it within the world and the history of the world.

January 16: The Musical Instrument by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

January 17: So We’ll Go No More A’Roving by Lord Byron.

January 18:

January 19:

January 20:

January 21: Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar.

January 22: There Will Come Soft Rains by Sara Teasdale.

January 23: Snowflakes by William Wadsworth Longfellow

January 24: Month of January by Hilaire Belloc.

January 25:

January 26: Winter: My Secret by Christina Rossetti.

January 27:

January 28:

January 29: Meeting at Night by Robert Browning.

January 30

January 31:

I have a fair number of poems already chosen for my “Poem a Day” for the month of January, but I’m also open to suggestions for the rest of the days of the month. If you have a favorite or suggested poem for me to read, please leave a comment.