A Clatter of Jars by Lisa Graff

Oct8

Lisa Graff’s A Tangle of Knots was a National Book Award nominee in 2014, and it was highly recommended by many people I trust. However, I never did manage to read it. If 2016’s sequel, A Clatter of Jars, is any measure, then I missed out and need to go back and pick up a copy of A Tangle of Knots.

A Clatter of Jars is an intricate, multi-layered story of giftedness and ordinariness and sibling jealousy, the suffering it can cause, apology, reconciliation, and forgiveness. The story, told from six different viewpoints of the campers in Cabin Eight at Camp Atropos for Talented Children, weaves in and out of the lives and magical talents of these campers to produce a sometimes confusing, always fascinating, tale of how family and community can grow strong if only we give up our place in the spotlight for the sake of others and ask forgiveness for our selfish and impulsive misdeeds.

I did like the characters and the complexity of this fantastical story. Lily can levitate objects by concentrating her mind on them. Chuck and Ellie, the Frog Twins, can identify the species of any frog within croaking distance. Renny is famous for reading minds, and his brother Miles may have his own secret Talent. All of the other children at the camp have Talents, too, and the way the talented children learn to work with, and sometimes against, one another makes for a wild ride of a story.

BUT. I was repeatedly thrown out of the story by two plot issues, one major and another minor. Am I behind the times? I know things are changing fast, but does any summer camp for middle schoolers—ages eleven, twelve and thirteen—house boys and girls together in the same cabin? Really? Lily, Renny, Miles, Chuck, and Ellie are assigned to Cabin Eight at Camp Atropos–two boys, brothers, and three girls. Really? This cabin assignment was just weird. There’s no boy-girl attraction, no crushes, in the story; it’s all about sibling rivalry and brothers and sisters trying to work out their sibling relationships. BUT. I kept wondering whether the author had any specific camp in mind when she wrote the book. I even looked it up. Coed camps for this age group are a thing, fine, but all of the ones I found on the internet separated boys and girls into different cabins. I can only begin to imagine the possible problems a camp would run into if boys and girls this age were assigned to share cabins. (The minor problem was the swimming policy. I don’t think camp administrators would allow children, even talented children, to just jump into the lake, anytime, and go for a swim by themselves, either.)

If you can ignore those two mistakes(?) or plot decisions(?), then you might just enjoy A Clatter of Jars quite a lot. You don’t have to read A Tangle of Knots to understand the sequel, but it might work better if you read the first book first. Or you can read them as I will be doing, backwards.

Saturday Review of Books: October 8, 2016

Oct7

“We agreed that people are now afraid of the English language. He [T.S. Eliot] said it came of being bookish, but not reading books enough. One should read all styles thoroughly.” ~Virginia Woolf from The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Two: 1920-1924

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Furthermore by Tahereh Mafi

Oct7

Alice Alexis Queensmeadow is a dull, colorless girl in a land full of color, and she is quite un-magical in a place where magic is the sustenance of life. When her father goes missing and her mother neglects and spurns her, Alice is determined to make something of her colorless, ugly life in spite of her lack of talent.

There’s a lot of falling involved in the course of the journey that Alice makes to find her father, and of course, the girl is named Alice. And Alice and her friend Oliver meet lots of strange creature in land of Furthermore, as they also encounter loads of nonsensical situations and obstacles. It all sounds like that other Alice, in Wonderland, but I would recommend that you read Lewis Carroll’s Alice books before or instead of this one. Mr. Carroll’s nonsense made some sense.

The writing is witty and imaginative at the sentence level, but the actual story starts out slowly. Over a hundred pages of introduction and set-up before the real adventure begins is a little too much of a muchness. Nevertheless, some delightful sentences and scenes kept me reading and enjoying the journey, even though the incessant squabbling between Alice and Oliver and the sheer ridiculousness of it all was a bit overwhelming.

Examples of lovely sentences:

“Humility had gotten lost on its journey to his ego, but the two had finally been reunited, and the meeting appeared to be painful. Oliver swallowed hard and looked away.”

“People are so preoccupied with making sense despite it being the most uninteresting thing to manufacture. . . Making magic . . . is far more interesting than making sense.”

“Laughter was a silk that would soften even the roughest moments.”

“Birds were pirouetting through the air and lambs were bleating their woes and flowers dipped and swayed in the wind like this was just another perfect day. But Alice wouldn’t believe it.”

Examples of sheer nonsense:

“Few come to Furthermore in search of decent pastures.” (decent what?)

“So she pet him between the ears and he nuzzled right into her hand.” (Isn’t the past tense of pet, “petted”?)

” . . . her feet kept moving even when she didn’t want them to. Not only did she not want them to keep moving, she wanted them to do the very opposite of keep-moving, but there was no one to tell her feet anything at all, as her mind was always missing when she needed it most.” (What does that mean?)

Alice and Oliver argue and lie to one another and and generally make their own lives miserable as well as the lives of those around them. On the other hand, they have excuses for their behavior. Alice feels rejected by her mother and abandoned by her father; Oliver has his own childhood sob story. And both of them are quite unkind to each other in the beginning of the story. If you can get past all that and enjoy the imaginative language and the nonsensical world of the story, maybe Furthermore will be just right for you. I liked Alice in Wonderland much better, thank you.

Irena’s Children by Tilar J. Mazzeo

Oct6

Irena’s Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto by Tilar J. Mazzeo.

This book tells the story of Polish social worker Irena Sendler, a courageous woman who risked her life to save Jewish children in Warsaw during World War War II. As I read I was reminded of my (fictional) introduction to the story of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw during World War II and of how the people living there were systematically and horrifically starved, persecuted, deported to death camps, Treblinka in particular, and finally exterminated. The ghetto itself was eventually burned and then razed. I read about all of this horror many years ago, first in Leon Uris’s book, Exodus, and then in his books that focuses on the Warsaw ghetto, Mila 18.

Many of the true stories in Irena’s Children mirror the stories that Uris told in his fictional accounts of the Holocaust. Irene Sendler and those who worked with her did smuggle Jewish babies out of the ghetto and place them in Christian (Catholic) orphanages and homes. They did take older children and adults through the sewers to get them out of the ghetto. Some Jews did escape just in the nick of time before the Nazis destroyed the entire ghetto, and others died in a failed, desperate uprising led mostly by teenagers and young adults who refused to be taken alive.

And Irena Sendler was a heroine, although she often vehemently denied any right to the title. She was a socialist and a humanitarian. She was not Jewish herself, but she had a Jewish lover, and therefore, a personal interest in the survival of Poland’s Jews. She risked her life again and again, however, for strangers, for children who could not thank her or protect her. She was eventually arrested and taken to a Gestapo prison, questioned, tortured, and scheduled for execution. She escaped with the help of the Polish Underground, and she went on to help more Jews and to survive the war and the Communist aftermath of the war.

I would have liked to have read more about Ms. Sendler’s life after the war, but that part of the story and of Irena Sendler’s life was given short shrift in a book that focuses mostly on her wartime activities. Ms. Sendler became a devout Catholic in her later years, and she was persecuted by the Communist government of Poland even as she was lauded by Jewish friends and friends of Israel around the world. The book has no index, and it could have used one since many of Irena Sendler’s associates had similar names and stories. The Polish names and places were hard for an English-speaking reader to keep straight, but Mazzeo does include a list of characters at the end of the book.

Behind the Canvas by Alexander Vance

Oct5

Seventh grader Claudia Miravista loves art, especially painting. None of her schoolmates share her interest, though, and when Claudia sees a blue-eyed boy inside a Dutch Renaissance painting at the local art museum and begins talking to him, her classmates think she’s crazy. But when Pim—that’s the boy’s name—talks back and asks Claudia to rescue him from captivity to an evil witch in the world behind the canvas, Claudia thinks her classmates may be right. Maybe she is crazy to even consider entering a dangerous world of canvas and paint and witches and cubists and magic.

The book definitely could have used several full color reproductions of the famous paintings that are mentioned, but I understand that would be costly. Instead, the author uses made-up explanatory footnotes from “Doctor Buckland’s Art History for the Enthusiast and the Ignorant” to give the reader information about artists, paintings, and schools of art that are mentioned in the story. I liked the rather whimsical footnotes, and for a glimpse of the actual paintings, there’s always Google.

The story itself doesn’t exactly move slowly; there’s lots of action. However, sometimes the journey from one artistic landscape to another to another gets a little monotonous. The grand theme of the book is about learning to see things (art in particular) from different perspectives and using one’s imagination to see through confusion to the heart of the matter. Claudia and Pim have trust issues and must learn to trust and help one another in spite of past lies and obfuscations.

Particularly recommended for art lovers who are also fantasy lovers, and for fans of Blue Balliet’s art mystery books or Elise Broach’s Masterpiece or Marianne Malone’s 68 Rooms series.

Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders

Oct3

Edith Nesbit’s classic story of siblings and magic, The Five Children and It, was first published in 1905. In Five Children on the Western Front, British children’s author Kate Suanders gives us the Bastable children about nine years older and wiser and the Psammead (pronounced Sammy-ad) as irascible as ever, but not quite so magical. Maybe that’s because the world itself was more magical in 1905 than it became in 1914.

World War I has intruded upon the lives of the grown-up or nearly grown-up children, Cyril, Anthea, Jane and Robert, and even The Lamb (Hilary) and the new little Bastable sister, Edie, are living in a wartime Britain rather than the idyllic turn-of-the century British countryside in which the older children first encountered magic. The story covers the wartime years, 1914-1918. The Psammead has returned to see the children through the war—or maybe he’s come back because he can’t really control his magic or grant wishes anymore, and he just needs a place to live. He thinks he’s been “de-magicked and dumped” in the Bastables’ garden by an angry universe. At any rate, Edie, nine years old at the story’s inception, takes a liking to the grumpy and rather sleepy sand fairy, and occasionally even manages to be involved in some magical adventures on his behalf.

I thought this was a fascinating look at “what ever happened to the five children and It”, but I would have to try it out on a real child to know whether this is just a book for nostalgic adults and teens who were Nesbit fans or whether actual children would enjoy it, too. There’s a lot of kissing and war romance and war scenes, shown from a child’s (sometimes eavesdropping) perspective and totally appropriate for children, but the story is really about adults as much as it is children.

It’s also about repentance. The Psammead has a cruel and tyrannical past life, and part of his task during the years of the book’s tale is to repent. Repentance in this particular case means understanding that he’s done something bad and feeling a bit sorry. No reform or payment is required, but the Psammead has trouble with even a minimal amount of humility or apology. So, the children take turns laughing at his unrepentant cruelty and carelessness and trying to convince him that he is not the center of the universe. Again, I was interested in whether or not the old Psammead would ever be able to “go home”, reconciled to the universe, but I don’t know how many children would stay interested.

For fans of Edith Nesbit or Downton Abbey (for the history) or maybe World War I settings.

Cybils Nominations Are Open

Oct1

The 2016 Cybils nominations are now live!

What are Cybils?
The Cybils awards are given each year by bloggers for the year’s best children’s and young adult titles. Nominations open to the public on October 1st.

What are the categories?
An award will be given in each of the following categories:
Audiobooks
Easy Readers and Early Chapter Books
Elementary/Middle-Grade Speculative Fiction
Fiction Picture Books/Board Books
Graphic Novels
Middle-Grade Fiction
Middle-Grade/Young Adult Nonfiction
Juvenile/Elementary Nonfiction
Poetry
Young Adult Fiction
Young Adult Speculative Fiction

Why do I (and why should you) care?
Well, every year thousands of new books for young adults and children are published in English in the United States and Canada. Some of those books are really good, but many are not. Sorting out the good from the bad and the ugly takes time and energy that most of us don’t have. The Cybils help, along with other awards like the Newbery, Caldecott and the National Book Awards, to highlight some of the best children’s books of the year, including some that might otherwise be missed in the rush. And I get to be on the judging panel this year for Middle Grade Fantasy and Science Fiction to choose a shortlist which will be the basis for the award given in that category. (So be sure to nominate your favorite “Middle Grade Speculative Fiction” books so that I and the committee I’m working with have all the best books to read and choose from.)

More important information about Cybils:
Be sure to check out the category descriptions. If you don’t know where the book should go, please read through the descriptions to help you decide. If you’re still not quite sure, make your best guess, and the Cybils organizers can straighten things out behind the scenes.

Take a minute to check out the rules for nominating. The big one: the book needs to be published in the U.S. or Canada between October 16, 2015 and October 15, 2016. Also you can nominate only ONE book per CATEGORY per PERSON. No exceptions. The form will kick you back if you try to nominate more than one book (or if someone else has already nominated the book).

If you have any other questions, check out the FAQ page.

Follow this link to nominate your favorite books in all categories. You have until October 15th.

The Skeleton Tree by Iain Lawrence

Sep30

Alaska. Boat capsized. Two teens marooned on the coast with no means of communication. Survival fiction. If these are your buzzwords, The Skeleton Tree should be your next read. It’s not as feel-good as the classic, My Side of the Mountain, but it is a well written, as far as I can tell well researched, survival story about two boys who learn to cooperate in spite of their deep differences.

Chris is twelve. His father just died a year before the book begins, and his Uncle Jack wants to take him on a sailing adventure down the Alaska coast from Kodiak. When Chris arrives to join Uncle Jack on the boat, he finds that there is another person on the boat, a sixteen year old boy named Franklin. Almost immediately after they cast off, with the boys’ questions about each other still unanswered, a storm overtakes the sailboat, and tragedy strikes. Uncle Jack is lost at sea, and the two boys must survive in the wilderness with bears, wolves, and imminent starvation as their immediate adversaries. Unfortunately, Frank is a bully and a braggart, and Chris is a boy who is used to being bullied, but tired of taking it. So, their relationship and lack of cooperation threaten to be more of an impediment to their survival than the outside dangers.

I was impressed with the details in this book about how to (or how not to) start a fire, how to treat an infected wound, how to catch salmon and preserve it, and other survival skills. The author says that he lived on the coast of British Columbia for many years within sight of Alaska and that he learned a lot about living in that “surprisingly wild” environment. The title, Skeleton Tree, is taken from the tree that the boys find that is a Native American burial ground, for lack of a better term. The skeletons of dead people are in coffins wedged in the tree, not buried and not on the ground. According to the author who got his information from a book about Alaskan history by Charles Haddock, “tree burials were once common in Alaska.” Mr. Lawrence also recounts his story of once having seen a still-living skeleton tree himself somewhere on the Northern Pacific coast.

The book is older middle grade or young adult with some difficult family situations referenced, but not described in detail. I’d say any fan of survival stories from age twelve to sixteen or seventeen might want to check this one out.

The Poet’s Dog by Patricia MacLachlan

Sep29

Patricia MacLachlan wrote the wonderful, Newbery award winning book, Sarah, Plain and Tall. Sarah is her most successful and most read novel. The books for children that she has written since Sarah, aside from the sequels to that novel, have mostly been innovative and different and even quirky, but just not as accessible and not as captivating as Sarah.

The Poet’s Dog follows in this same vein, interesting but not exactly an instant classic or even a best seller. The story is about a talking dog, an Irish wolfhound, who rescues two children who are stranded in a snowstorm. I don’t quite understand why the children decide to leave the car where their mother left them when she went to look for help. They say, “People came and knocked on the car windows, telling us the car was going to be towed off the road before it got covered with snow.” So the children left the car in a blizzard? Why would people knock on the car windows and then leave two children there in the snow? Why would the children not wait for the tow truck to help them get to somewhere safe? Or wait for their mother to come back? Nicholas is twelve years old, old enough to know better than to go off with his little sister into a blizzard.

That bit of illogic aside, the dog is sweet. He used to belong to a poet named Sylvan who lived in a cabin in the woods, low technology and high on the poetic, free spirit, Wendell Berry kind of a life. But Sylvan is gone, and the dog, Teddy, lives alone in the cabin until he finds the two children. Teddy can talk, but the only people who can hear him are poets and children. Nice touch.

I also liked the references to picture books and the recognition that many good picture book texts are also poems. Specifically, Sylvan says that Ox-cart Man by Donald Hall is one of his favorite poems. Other poetic picture books: Summer Is . . . by Charlotte Zolotow (almost anything by Charlotte Zolotow), Wake Up, City by Alvin Tresselt, The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown, Umbrella by Taro Yashima, A Good Day by Kevin Henkes, Madeleine by Ludwig Bemelmans. Actually, most of the picture books that are more about the language, and the rhythm of reading the book aloud, and the word pictures than they are about plot and characters are really little illustrated poems. That’s not an original thought with me or with Ms. MacLachlan, but it was a nice thought to be reminded of.

In the end, though, this book had several “nice touches” but not much substance. I can’t see it being popular with dog lovers, in spite of Teddy’s cuteness, or beginning readers, in spite of the large, sparse text and abbreviated length (88 pages), or poetry fans, in spite of the poetry connection. Maybe eight to ten year old poetry fans who like short books with talking animals? How many of those are out there?