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Storybound by Marissa Burt

Oct8

First of all, Cliffhanger Warning! This book may be hazardous to your reading satisfaction since it ends with those three dread words: “to be continued.”

Nevertheless, I recommend Storybound for those who enjoy, well, a good story. This one has all the archetypes: the lonely orphan girl, Una, the Hero, Peter, his friend and companion, Sam the Cat, the lady Snow, the evil Tale Master and the Red Enchantress. Una has been Written In to Story, a magic land of book characters without any books of its own to read. The Tale Masters keep all of the books locked away for the protection of Story from the Muses who broke their oath long ago brought havoc upon the land. Una doesn’t know why she’s been Written In or by whom, but she must find out before evil overtakes Story.

The story (or Story) definitely has Christian symbolism and undertones. (“We are only servants. And our charge is to wait for the King’s return,” says one of the most powerful defenders of goodness.) However, the lessons about good and evil are never blatant or preachy or overwhelming to the story. Mostly, it’s just a tale about the power and importance of stories and about the Hero Quest of one young girl and her companions as they find themselves and save the world from destruction.

Recommended for ages 12 and up.

Other voices:
Pages Unbound: “Heroes plot in the night, villains prove kindhearted, and the enemy sometimes turns out to be a friend. The sense of mystery pervading the work will keep readers turning pages long after they should have gone to bed. The only problem with the work is that the sequel is not yet available.”

Books and Quilts: “I was totally immersed in this story. I could hardly put it down. How could there be a world where students trained to become the beloved characters as well as the evil villains in the books I read. Wow.”

Interview with Marissa Burt at Cynsations.

Interview with Marissa Burt at The Book Cellar: “Shy, twelve-year-old Una Fairchild is suddenly transported by a mysterious book into the Land of Story, where characters from books train to be cast into a Tale of their own, and Una attends the Perrault Academy while trying to discover who has Written her In and why.”

The Cabinet of Earths by Anne Nesbet

Oct6

This debut fantasy novel for middle grade readers has several things going for it. It’s set in Paris, and the main character, Maya, is a spunky, intelligent twelve year old with an oddly charismatic little brother named James. And the book has salamanders and a creepy beautiful glass-fronted cabinet. Maya is supposed to become the new Keeper of the Cabinet. The atmosphere reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe updated to the twenty-first century and with children.

However, the story took a long time to unwind until finally in chapter 11 (page 142) we learn “What Cabinet Keepers Keep.” I think you could condense the story into an episode of Once Upon a Time (our current favorite TV show which is back for a second season, yeah!), and it would work better. The book isn’t particularly long, only 256 pages, but it just seems s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d, if that makes sense. That said, I did like it, and I thought the ending was great.

Some people, including author Alexander McCall Smith, have been using the hashtag #10Wordbooks on twitter to share 10 word descriptions of their favorite novels and plays. You can check it out if you’re on Twitter; it’s kind of fun. Here are a couple of samples:

@text_publishing: JANE EYRE: ‘What’s that noise from the attic, Mr Rochester?’ ‘Nothing, darling.’ #10wordbooks
@semicolonblog Gone With the Wind: Scarlett loves Scarlett, thinks she loves Ashley, Rhett loves Scarlett. #10wordbooks
@mccallsmith One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in ten words: Story of inmates of psychiatric institution; warning – may contain nuts.#10wordbooks

The Cabinet of Earths 10 word description: Paris. Science and magic, tangled. Immortality, rejected. Salamanders are amphibious.

Renegade Magic by Stephanie Burgis

Oct5

One way to write fantasy fiction is to take an author or a genre that you like, write some fan fiction, but insert magic into the plot. In Renegade Magic, the second in a series called Kat Incorrigible, Ms. Burgis took her favorite Regency romances (think Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen) and gave them a magical twist. The result is entertaining, but I’m not sure whom it’s supposed to entertain.

Our protagonist is twelve year old Kat. Kat found out in the first book of the series (which I haven’t read) that she’s a Guardian, a member of a secret group of powerful members of society who protect the world from witchcraft and wild magic run amuck. Of course, in order to protect they have to use Magic, which is socially unacceptable. So the underlying plot concerns whether or not Kat will be initiated and become a full-fledged Guardian or whether she will be thwarted by her enemies within the group and by her not-very-understanding, social-climbing stepmother.

However, the second, intertwining plot is pure romance. Kat’s older sister, Angeline, is in love with Frederick Carlyle. He returns her affections; however, Frederick’s mother is not about to let her son become entangled with a family in which witchcraft and magic figure prominently. Kat’s mother was a Guradian and practiced witchcraft on the side. And Angeline is a witch, too. And Kat, of course, is entangled in a web of wild magic and witchcraft and her aspirations to guardianship. So, Kat’s family is not altogether fit for polite society. The romance part of the book is tame, even though it involves a rakish seducer and some Oxford students cavorting around in the baths of Bath in the nude, but it just doesn’t seem as if it would appeal to the 12 year olds who would be drawn to the book by its 12 year old protagonist.

So, young adult romance readers would be turned off by the youth of the main character, and middle graders would seem to be too young to have much interest in Regency romance. At least my eleven year old wouldn’t care about it. So, if you have a young teen who’s interested in magic tales (Harry Potter or Edward Eager’s Half Magic) and also Regency romance (Pride and Prejudice or The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer), then Renegade Magic would be the book to recommend.

Cold Cereal by Adam Rex

Oct4

Once upon a time I read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, and I became a vegetarian for about two days. Cold Cereal by Adam Rex may convince me to give up breakfast cereal for the duration. I know it’s fantasy, bordering on satire, but the satirical elements are effective. For example, from a footnote about Goodco Cereal Company on page 206:

“[N]atural cereal grains have been almost entirely replaced in Goodco products by vat-grown imitation grain meals such as Gorn, Weet, Noats and Gorn-Free, the Gornless Gorn substitute.”

OK, I know it’s not quite that bad, but I did hear a piece on NPR the other day about how a few farmers are feeding their pigs discarded chocolate scraps and other scraps such as “bread, dough, pastries, even Cap’n Crunch” because the price of corn is so high. Can the adulteration of breakfast cereal be far behind?

To get back to the book, Cold Cereal is the story of three children –Erno Utz, his twin sister Emily Utz, and their friend, Scottish Doe–against an evil cereal corporation, Goodco, that wants to take over the world. The children have allies–a leprechaun (or clurichaun) named Mick, a pooka, a very big guy who may or may not be Bigfoot, and some mostly ineffective adults. The Evil Breakfast Food Corporation also has its own cast of strange employees and supporters, including evil members of a international fraternity that sounds suspiciously like a parody of the Freemasons.

The first half of the book was both funny and absorbing, but somewhere in the second half I lost track of the machinations and plot twists. By the end I was confused about what the “rules” of magic in the book were, who belonged where, and what happened and how the questions raised in the first half were answered. Either I’m a little slow-witted, which is entirely possible, or Mr. Rex tried to incorporate too many strands in his story, too many stories in his novel, and too many permutations to his magical world. In short, I got lost somewhere King Arthur and Intellijuice and the goblins that impersonate Queen Elizabeth.

However, I did enjoy the parts I did understand, and I recommend Cold Cereal to those of you who don’t mind being disillusioned about the ingredients in your breakfast cereal and who can follow a myriad cast of twisted magical characters in a complicated tale of breakfast turmoil.

I think it’s set up for a sequel. Either that, or I missed the tying up of the loose ends of the plot, or Mr. Rex just likes things complex and open-ended.

Mr. and Mrs. Bunny: Detectives Extraordinaire! by Mrs. Bunny

Oct2

Translated from the Rabbit by Polly Horvath.

This particular book is a tricksy one. I was expecting talking animals, something along the lines of Rabbit Hill or maybe Charlotte’s Web, and I got a hilarious tale about a couple of ridiculous, bickering, married rabbits who “adopt” the neglected daughter of leftover hippy parents who are, in turn, kidnapped by foxes.

Madeline is the girl, and she is a sort of Alice in Wonderland character, a very responsible daughter who takes care of her less-than-brainy parents and finds herself in a fantastical predicament. When said parents, Mildred and Flo, are kidnapped by some nefarious foxes who say MUAHAHA a lot, Madeline must find and rescue them. But the only help she can get is from Mr. and Mrs. Bunny, who have just bought fedoras and are attempting to solve their first case as amateur detectives.

The resulting mis-adventure is a lovely romp through Rabbit-land and the woods and valleys of Vancouver Island, British Columbia with several running gags. There are repeated references to learning languages and communication difficulties as Flo tries to learn fox language from his captors, and Madeline decides she’s a Bunny Whisperer because she understands rabbit. Mr. and Mrs. Bunny compete with one another for who can be the most clueless, aimless, and scatterbrained detective in Rabbit-land. Then, there’s The Marmot, whose first name is The, and who has a passion for garlic bread. The Marmot is even more foolish and brainless than Mr. and Mrs. Bunny, Flo and Mildred and all the foxes put together.

I think with humor and comedy you always run the risk that some of your readers just won’t get the joke or won’t have the same sense of humor that you do. I saw some reviews at Amazon that criticized this book for using the word “crap” and for making fun of New Agers and the British royal family, among others. (Prince Charles does make a cameo appearance in the final chapters, and he comes off rather well as a reassuring adult character, actually.) All I can say is that this story tickled my funny bone in just the right places, and I was only sorry to see it end.

Ordinary Magic by Caitlen Rubino-Bradway

Oct2

Ordinary Magic sort of takes the Harry Potter world of Muggles, the ordinary people who make the world work, and Wizards, the special magical people who get to go to Hogwarts for special training and for their own protection, and turns it upside-down. In Abigail Hale’s world, everybody has magical abilities, well, almost everybody, It’s not usually a question of whether you’re magical or not, only how gifted you are. Abigail’s older sister Alexa is a Nine. (Tens are quite rare.) So when Abigail goes for her Judging on her thirteenth birthday, she’s hoping to test out at least a Six level. Instead, she and her loving family (two brothers, two sisters, Abigail is the youngest) receive the devastating news that Abby is an Ord, ordinary, no magical ability at all.

“There are few options available to the families of ords. It is a shame there are so few, but it’s not as if it can be changed. . . I sympathize with the frustration you must be feeling. The tragedy of realizing that one of your own is . . .” He sighed. “This must be very hard. I understand that many families experience difficulty in deciding what to do. I believe a few occasionally decide to keep their . . their. . . ”
“Children,” Mom cut in.

Abby’s family is large and loving, one of the first things I noticed that I liked about this book. Abby meets other ord children who do not have such great families, but she is lucky to have a family that believes in her, works to provide the best opportunities for her, and loves her, even though she is an Ord, non-magical, a practical pariah in normal (magic-permeated) society.

I have to say here that I am about to decide that our society is made of two kinds of people: not Ords and Magicals, but Creatives and Non-creatives. I look at books like this one and several others that I’ve read recently, and I’m amazed. How do authors think of such entertaining and ingenious plots and characters and worlds of imagination? I mean, OK, I do have a semi-original idea every once in while, but then some of those same imaginative people who have a stray idea actually carry it through to a finished project, in this case a whole book (soon to be a series). And it works, and I enjoy, and then I read another book in which a completely different person has taken a completely different idea and turned that seed into yet another real-life product. And I am again grateful to God for the gifts and ideas and talents and vision He has given each of us, especially those “creatives” who bring so much joy to me in the books they write or the other works of art they produce.

So, back to Ordinary Magic. I liked the premise; I liked the book. It might get old and repetitious as a series, but then again, maybe not. Ordinary Magic is eligible to be nominated for a Cybils Award in the category of Middle Grade Fantasy and Science Fiction. Nominations are open October 1-15, 2012.

Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz

Oct1

I think this rather dark fantasy about a witch, three children, and some marionettes is my favorite of all Ms. Schlitz’s books that I’ve read. I like the fact that her books are all different from each other and that they all stand alone. A Drowned Maiden’s Hair, the book that won the Cybils Award for Middle Grade Fiction in 2007, was historical melodrama, set in the New England in the early twentieth century, with some historical characters and (fake) seances thrown into the mix. Her Newbery award-winning book, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, is a series of 22 monologues told from the point of view of 22 different medieval characters who live in a typical village. The Night Fairy is more of a fairy tale for younger children, those who are just entering the chapter book reading phase.

And now we have Splendors and Glooms, Ms. Schlitz’s latest offering, set in Victorian England, which tells the story of two orphan children who are under the care and domination of an Italian puppet-master named Grisini. Grisini is appropriately greasy and nasty and villainous. Cassandra, the witch of the tale, appropriately lives in a sort of castle with a tower, and she’s, of course, clairvoyant and insane, just like the mythological Cassandra. The orphans, Lizzie Rose and Parsefall seem like typical Victorian street urchins at first, but each one is much more complicated and multifaceted than the typical Oliver Twist character in a Victorian novel. Lizzie Rose is a good girl, motherly and always seeing the best in people, but she manages to lead Parsefall and their friend into danger and still remain strong and compassionate to the end. Parsefall is the Artful Dodger of the piece, but he has a secret wound and turns out to be a true knight who saves the “princess” from death.

The final major character in this ensemble cast is Clara Wintermere, who is the only child from her rich family to survive a cholera epidemic that killed her five siblings when she was only five years old. Clara’s been living in the shadow of those siblings, called the “deaders” by Parsefall, ever since. Clara is the Poor Little Rich Girl who’s so protected and spoiled that she has only a hint of a personality in the beginning of the book, but it is Clara who manages to defeat the witch and her magic and free the children from Cassandra’s evil spells.

The title comes from the poem Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, canto 13, by Percy Bysshe Shelley. I’ll leave you with the section of the poem that’s printed in the beginning of the book because it sums up the atmosphere of this brooding and haunting novel that turns out to be a rather down-to-earth story of the rescue and redemption of three children and a witch:

And others came . . . Desires and Adorations,
Wingèd Persuasions and veiled Destinies,
Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations
Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,
Came in slow pomp;–the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.

Splendors and Glooms is eligible to be nominated for a Cybils Award in the category of Middle Grade Fantasy and Science Fiction. Nominations are open October 1-15, 2012.

Laugh With the Moon by Shana Burg

Sep25

In the summer of 2011, a small group of young people from my church went to northern Zambia to help out for a month at Kazembe Orphanage there. Two of the girls who went were only thirteen years old at the time. While they were there, a new baby was brought to the orphanage. The baby, Jessie, was very sick, as many of the orphans brought to Kazembe Orphanage are. These girls helped care for Jessie, held her at night, tried to feed her, prayed for her . . . and mourned her when she finally died.

It was a difficult experience for the girls from our church, but it’s one that is all too common in southern African countries like Zambia and Malawi. Laugh with the Moon by Shana Burg is set in Malawi, and I admire the author for not being afraid to portray the suffering and tragedy that often characterizes life for children in rural areas of southern Africa in particular. As I read Laugh with the Moon, I wondered if the conditions and possible tribulations of life in an African would be “sanitized” for the consumption of young American teens, but they weren’t. The book includes sickness, orphans, poor living conditions, malnutrition, deprivation, and even death.

And yet, there is hope. Thirteen year old Clare Silver comes, against her will, to Malawi with her doctor father. Both of them are still grieving the death of Clare’s mother, and Clare is not sure she can survive yet another disruption in her life. Dad, on the other hand, is looking for comfort and distraction, and he refuses to “listen” to Clare’s silent protest except to tell her to “cut it out, already.”

Then, Clare meets Memory, a village girl who has lost both of her parents. The book never tells how Memory’s parents died, but the implication is that death is so common in rural Malawi that it’s not even especially significant how they died. Clare and Memory become friends. Clare attends the village school, imagines her mother’s voice counseling her, and slowly comes to understand that “grief isn’t a tunnel you walk through and you’re done. It waxes and wanes like the moon.”

I love books set in other, foreign-to-me, countries and cultures, especially Africa. I don’t know why, except that I feel as if we can learn from one another if we can only begin to understand how God made us all individual and unique and yet able to communicate and understand across and through time and culture. I sound like an advertisement for cultural diversity curriculum, but I really do believe that all peoples, all cultures have aspects and artifacts that God wants to redeem and use to enrich us all with all the, yes, diversity, that He has made. Anyway, Laugh with the Moon is a sometimes sad, sometimes funny, sometimes educational, always fascinating look into the life of children in rural Malawi.

It’s a story I’m going to recommend to those girls who encountered death and suffering in rural Zambia a couple of summers ago. They’re planning to go back in 2013.

Laugh with the Moon is eligible to be nominated for the 2012 Cybils Awards in the category of Middle Grade Fiction. Nominations open on October 1, 2012.

The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy

Sep24

AHGTSYK has a Princess Bride tone and humor to it with lots of The Three Stooges thrown in. Only it has four stooges, or rather Princes Charming, and one of them, Duncan (Snow White’s Prince Charming), is completely insane, bonkers. These are NOT the princes you would choose to have around when you’re in need of a rescue. The only one who’s any good at rescuing, Liam (Sleeping Beauty’s Prince Charming), is going through a popularity crisis. He’s always been quite beloved of his people and popular, but the waspish Princess Briar Rose, who’s a spoiled brat, has spread false rumors about him ever since he said he wouldn’t marry her and become her slave. Now she says Liam dumped her (true), threw rotten eggs at the royal family’s prize poodles, and drew a mustache on the queen’s portrait (or maybe on the queen, depending on who’s telling the story). Everybody hates Liam for spoiling the royal alliance. The other two princes, Frederic (Cinderella’s prince) and Gustav (Rapunzel’s prince) have their own issues, and the resulting adventure/how to manual is a laugh a minute.

Guys and girls should be able to enjoy this comedy of errors and slapstick and sarcasm, but the humor may lean toward the guy-side. As I said, Three Stooges, slapstick, ridiculosity (should be a word, even if it isn’t). The book does tend to be on the long-ish side,436 pages, but those who like it will want more, and those who don’t will quit.

Other voices:
There’s a Book: “Within the pages of The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom readers find characters that leave you in stitches and have you begging for more. This is a story about friendship, one in that ensures readers will never look at their favorite classic characters the same way and may even have young readers looking for what’s beyond the stereotypes in the people around them.”
The Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia: “Healy combines the traditional stories of Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Rapunzel and Cinderella into the overall narrative, and from there things go haywire, sideways, and explosions feature prominently. It’s fun, silly, outrageous and a really good time.”
Small Review: “I’m contemplating bribery so I can get my little hands on more because I want more Frederic, Liam, Gustav, and Duncan (a.k.a. Prince Charming) right now.”

Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George

Sep20

I’ve already enjoyed a couple of young adult fantasy novels by author Jessica Day George, Princess of the Midnight Ball and Princess of Glass, but this book is for a younger, middle grade audience, about third through fifth grade.

Eleven year old Princess Celie has a couple of older brothers and an older sister who love her dearly but are somewhat bossy and annoying at least some of the time, and she lives in a Castle that reinvents itself frequently, especially on Tuesdays. Castle Glower chooses and cares for the royal family, and the Castle loves Celie best of all. (It sort of talks to her.)

So when Prince Khelsh of Vhervhine comes for a visit and stays to usurp the throne and take over the Kingdom of Sleyne, it’s Celie who can (kind of) communicate with the Castle Glower and enlist its help in ejecting the intruders. The process isn’t easy, however, especially since Celie’s loving parents, King Glower the Seventy-Ninth and Queen Celina are missing, presumed dead, after a journey to fetch her oldest brother Bran upon his graduation from the College of Wizardry.

I tried to get my reluctant reader, Z-baby, age 11, interested in this book, but she said, “No pictures. No way.” Maybe I’ll read it to her, or at least start reading it to her. (Insert evil cackle, heh, heh, heh.) She might just want to know how it ends if I break off in the middle.

Tuesdays at the Castle was nominated and shortlisted last year for the Cybils Award for Middle Grade Science Fiction and Fantasy, published in early October just about at the cut-off date. It’s a delightful story, and I recommend it highly.