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Claim to Fame by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Jun7

“This is my secret. I would call it a hidden talent, but talents are supposed to be happy possessions, something to rejoice over and nurture and maybe even gloat about. My secret skill has brought me nothing but pain. At any given moment I can hear anything anybody says about me., anywhere in the world.”

I like Margaret Peterson Haddix’s books. I enjoyed The Shadow Children series, The Missing series, and her stand alone novels such as Leaving Fishers or Double Identity. Claim to Fame is another good, solid entry into Ms. Haddix’s catalog of short but thoughtful YA fiction.

The premise is good: child actress Lindsay Scott finds that she can suddenly “hear” anything anyone says about her anywhere in the world. She’s about to go crazy from all the babble and gossip, good, bad and indifferent, when she finds a place where she can escape into silence. But now after five years as a recluse, things are changing again. Lindsay must find a way to deal with her “gift” as an adult and not a self-absorbed teenager.

Of course, that’s the key. Don’t we all have to find a way to use the gifts and cope with the disabilities we have without being self-centered, attention-seeking narcissists? It’s a part of growing up, and at 52, sometimes I’m still working on it.

One of the urchins says she wants to be famous. (She plans to achieve this fame on Broadway.) I told her earlier today that fame as a goal wasn’t really worth the effort. She asked if I would be ashamed of her if she became famous, and I told her that I’d rather she had a goal to become excellent. If she becomes an excellent artist or actress or engineer or sales clerk and becomes famous as a by-product, I’d be proud of her. But fame by itself is rather empty. Ask Lindsay Scott, fictional celebrity, who hears all about herself every time she leaves her house in an echo chamber that points out all of her failings, insecurities, and vulnerabilities incessantly. Fame ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Margaret Peterson Haddix on the inspiration behind Claim to Fame.

For the Win by Cory Doctorow

Jun7

Book #3 for Mother Reader’s 48 Hour Book Challenge
Reading TIme: 5 hours
Pages: 475

Workers of the World Unite! Let the Games Begin! It’s The Sting (Robert Redford, Paul Newman) on steroids and inside/outside a computer game!

Mr. Doctorow knows a lot about economics and about computers and computer games. I don’t know much about either.

Mr. Doctorow also has a gift for telling a good story. And he ties up the loose ends a lot better than the writers on LOST did.

I enjoyed this techno-thriller by author of Little Brother even though unions and computer games are not my thing. I learned a lot about economics and banking and derivatives and hedge funds currency and inflation and deflation, but I still don’t understand any of them.

The characters made the book:

Mala is a brilliant fifteen year old gameplayer from the Mumbai slum of Dharavi. Her nickname is General Robotwallah, and she leads an army of gamers in battle over the internet each day.

Jiandi is the host of The Factory Girl Show, broadcast over the net to twelve million Chinese factory workers every evening.She listens to their questions, give answers, and encourages the factory girl to fight for justice.

Leonard, aka Wei-Dong, is a seventeen year old game-obsessed high school student from Los Angeles who somehow ends up helping the Webblies, a new union of workers from all over the world, who are uniting to fight for better pay and conditions for illegal gameplayers and for other oppressed workers.

Connor Prikkel works in Coca Cola Games Command Central, hunting down illegal gold farmers and monitoring and adjusting the games to work as perfectly balanced economies. Connor is a gamerunner, and he hates “third-world rip-off artists” who cheat and mine the games for virtual gold and other assets.

Matthew Fong lives in Shenzhen in Southern China, and he’s determined to build his own successful gold-farming operation despite threats from the bosses and harassment from the police.

Big Sister Nor is the mastermind behind the Webblies, a union struggling to organize gamers from all over the world and get them just rewards for their labor and safe workplaces.

It’s a good book, even if I’m not so sure about the politics involved. By the way, you can download and read Doctorow’s book for free. Mr. Doctorow believes that he’ll make more money and everyone will be happier if he makes a name for himself by giving away his his books on the internet. My copy came from the library.

The Long Way Home by Andrew Klavan

Jun5

Book #2 for Mother Reader’s 48 Hour Book Challenge
Reading TIme: 2.25 hours
Pages: 345

Andrew Klavan takes a subtle dig at his own book in a paragraph near the middle of The Long Way Home, the second book in the Homelanders series of YA thrillers.

“I missed Rick and Miler and Josh. I missed having someone to kid around with and talk to. I missed long conversations about girls and sports and arguments about whether Medal of Honor was cooler than Prince of Persia and why part 2 of any trilogy was never as good as parts 1 and 3. I missed being with the guys who knew me best and liked me just the way I was. I missed my friends.”

Yeah. What he said. This book was fun, but not quite as suspenseful as Book 1 of the series, The Last Thing I Remember*, and probably not as satisfying as the last book in the trilogy that comes out in November 2010, to be titled The Truth of the Matter. In fact, I would suggest waiting until November and then grabbing the the set of three books for any pre-teen/teen guys on your Christmas list —and another set for yourself.

Here’s why:
1. The books are suspenseful. Maybe I’m just dumb, but I haven’t figured out yet why Charlie has amnesia and is missing a whole year of his life or why the bad guys in the story think he was on their side and has betrayed them. Nor have I figured out how Charlie West is going to get out of the mess he’s in.

2. The bad guys are bad, and the good guys are good. Not a lot of nuance here. I think that’s a good thing. I think all of us, teenage guys especially, need heroes and a way of seeing the world as a place where they can tell the difference between good and evil and align themselves/ourselves with the good.

3. Lots of action. Several scenes are really violent, bad guys get beat up, and karate is used freely. Also there are car chases and motorcycle chases and on-foot chases, lots of movement. KarateKid, age 13, would like this aspect of the books.

4. In this series, boys are boys, and girls are girls. The protagonist, Charlie, is a boy, and he and his friends tease and mock each other mercilessly. Charlie’s girlfriend, observing all this male bonding, says (more than once), “You guys are so mean.” Also, the girlfriend, Beth, is a girl. When she’s in danger she doesn’t wimp out, but she also doesn’t take over and become the heroine of the story. Charlie is the hero, and Beth is his helper and inspiration.

5. No sex and no foul language. There is some chaste romance; Charlie and Beth eventually kiss. But these are good kids with their priorities in place, and they respect each other. Not all teen guys are thinking of one thing only all the time, and they don’t need to be told endlessly that every other teen guy is thinking of that one thing all the time.

6. Author Andrew Klavan also has his priorities in place, and I can trust him to deliver a good, fast-paced, satisfying ending to this series. That’s why I feel comfortable recommending the third book in the series before having read it. Thirteen or fourteen is about the median age for this series, and guys will like it better than girls, mostly because of Reason #3.

*I read The Last Thing I Remember during my Lenten blog break, and I wrote in my journal at that time: “Yeah! A middle school boy book! A book that celebrates faith, karate, self-defense, and American values without being didactic or cheesy!”

Countdown by Deborah Wiles

Jun5

Book #1 for Mother Reader’s 48 Hour Book Challenge
Reading TIme: 2.5 hours
Pages: 378

So Countdown is a “documentary novel” taking place in the fall of 1962 near Andrews Air Force Base. Franny Chapman is in fifth grade, and she has a lot going on in her life. Her best friend Margie is suddenly not a friend anymore. Franny’s sister Jo Ellen is hiding something and spending way too much time at college when she should be at home helping Franny. Chris Cavas has just moved back into the house next door, and he’s somehow grown up to resemble Del Shannon instead of Beaver Cleaver. Uncle Otts is trying to build a bomb shelter in the backyard, and everyone is worried about the Russians. What if the air raid siren goes off for real, and the Communists drop the Bomb and end the world as Franny knows it? Will “duck and cover” really be enough to save Franny and her friends and family?

I was born in 1957. In the fall of 1962, I was five years old. Our schools didn’t have kindergarten, so I wasn’t in school yet. I wondered as I was reading if that was why I didn’t remember anything about civil defense shelters or air raid drills or Bert the Turtle or “duck and cover.” So I asked Engineer Husband who’s a few years older than me and would have been about Franny’s age in 1962. He remembers civl defense shelters with the yellow triangle, but he didn’t really know their purpose. And, like me, the only drills he remembers were fire drills and tornado drills (in which you did find an inside wall away from glass and duck and cover your head). I suppose the the powers-that-be in West Texas where we grew up were a lot more worried about fires and tornadoes than atomic bombs. (Engineer Husband does remember being scared silly because his older brother told him that if Kennedy were elected in 1960, he and all his friends would be forced to go to Catholic school.)

Still, even though I don’t remember any bomb scares, I did find a lot of the cultural references in the book familiar. Ms. WIles writes about 45rpm records; I remember those. And I recognized all the songs: Runaway, Moon RIver, Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, and Monster Mash. (I wondered where the Beatles were, but apparently they didn’t “invade” until 1964.) It was fun for me to read about all of the brands and fads and events of my childhood, even if the book does take place a little before my time.

Interspersed between chapters of the fictional story about Franny and her search for peace in a chaotic world are photographs, news reports, excerpts from speeches, documentary-style reports on famous people like Truman and Kennedy and Pete Seeger. Coming from the conservative side of the aisle, I thought the reports were a little biased toward the left, especially making Kennedy into a King Arthur of Camelot. For instance, the Kennedy bio says that Kennedy “had to deal with a problem he inherited from Eisenhower: the Bay of Pigs invasion.” Yes, training for the Bay of Pigs began under Eisenhower, but Kennedy knew all about it and allowed, if not ordered, the invasion to happen under his watch. The biographical piece on Kennedy generally presents an idyllic picture of him and his presidency, saying that he “made hard decisions” and “dreamed of peace” and served for “three glittering years.” It’s not blatantly biased, though, and as an introduction to President Kennedy and the early 1960’s, it will do.

I liked the characters and the story as much I did the newsy informative sections that were sprinkled throughout the book. The fiction and nonfiction portions of the book complemented each other well. I’m planning a twentieth century study for my homeschool students and for me sometime in the next few years in which we study through the twentieth century year by year. I think Countdown would be a great introduction to the year 1962 and to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War. After reading the book, we could take a look, and a listen, at the primary sources that Ms. Wiles used to inform her fiction. And then it should still be possible to interview some people who lived during 1962 and remember those times. I’m getting excited, and nostalgic, thinking about it.

Countdown website.
Deborah Wiles’ website.
Scroll down to the previous post for a link to the a book trailer and an excerpt form chapter 1 of Countdown.

Mother Reader’s 48-Hour Book Challenge

Jun5

I waffled back and forth and over and under about whether or not to join in on Mother Reader’s 48-Hour Book Challenge. I can’t really participate for 48 hours during the time of the challenge, but I decided to start at 12:30 today, June 5th and finish on Monday morning for my own 43 1/2 hour challenge.

My first book is Countdown by Deborah Wiles, a review book kindly sent to me by the publicist working with Scholastic.

“Countdown is the first in a new trilogy of “documentary novels” set in the 1960s- a fascinating historical documentary in a unique style and format. Filled with photos, news clippings, and songs of the era, this novel tells the story of Franny Chapman, an eleven-year-old girl living in Washington, DC, set against the backdrop of one of the most politically and culturally defining periods in history.”

Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce

Jun4

OK, this one is easily the best children’s fiction title I’ve read this year. It has all the following strengths:

1. It’s funny. Cf. the first chapter, entitled “I Am Not Exactly in the Lake District.” What makes that funny is that Liam, the thirteen year old protagonist and narrator of this adventure story, is actually “on this rocket . . . about two hundred thousand miles above the surface of the Earth.” Cosmic is about how Liam got into space and what happened when he did. Short version: he lied about his age.

2. It’s British. Not too British. Not so thick with slang that one has to have a dictionary, but still the Britishisms are there and delightfully so. Liam and his dad carry a “mobile,” not a cell. Things are either “rubbish” or “cosmic.” Liam eats crisps. You get the idea.

3. It’s got a good solid, unbelievable, but satisfying premise: child pretends to be adult, and hijinks ensue. Freaky Friday material. But there’s no magic involved. Liam just looks old. He has facial hair at thirteen. He’s very tall. He keeps getting mistaken for an adult, so he does what most thirteen year old boys would like to do: he goes along with the mistaken identity. Liam’s lack of a driver’s license only slows him down, but doesn’t stop his adventures.

4. It’s well-written and well-paced. Stuff happens. Liam gets into trouble, out of trouble, back into trouble, out, then into MAJOR trouble. Being stuck in space with four other kids who don’t know much more than Liam about how to fix an off-course rocket is Trouble.

5. Liam’s voice is splendid. Examples:
“That night Dad wanted us all to play Monopoly in the new kitchen. Has anyone ever played Monopoly to the end? Don’t most people just sort of slip into a sort of boredom coma after a few goes and wake up six months later with a handful of warm hotels?”

“Being doomed is Not Good. But being weightless is Outstanding. Every time I lean forward I do a perfect somersault. When I stretch my arms in the air I levitate. Back on Earth my only skills are being above average in math and height. Up here I’ve got so many skills I’m practically a Power Ranger.”

“In World of Warcraft you can have weapon skills, gathering skills, or trade skills. You can have mining skills, too, but they’re a bit rubbish and you have to buy a pickax.”

“I didn’t really want to think about things going wrong so I just concentrated on the drinks menu. I couldn’t believe when the others all asked for coffees and teas. There were so many drinks to choose from. I spotted something called the Cosmic Quencher, which I had to order because ‘cosmic’ is my favorite word.”

See what I mean. Liam is Cosmic!

Weaknesses of the book:
1. Totally unbelievable. How many thirteen year old boys can masquerade as the dad of one of their classmates?
2. Sometimes silly. Liam is not the brightest bulb in the ummmm, light fixture.
3. Disrespectful to adults. The adults in the story are also not too bright.
4. Encouraging irresponsible behavior. Don’t try this at home, kids!

I can’t think of any more weaknesses, and I actually think the weaknesses are strengths, too. Cosmic is a cosmic book for cosmic kids. Check it out.

More love for Cosmic:
Kelly at Big A little a.
Nayu’s Reading Corner.
Noel de Vries at Never Jam Today.

And it’s going to be made into a movie!

Fiction from the African Game Reserve

May31

Akimbo and the Elephants by Alexander McCall Smith.
Akimbo and the Lions.
Akimbo and the Snakes.
Akimbo and the Baboons.
Akimbo and the Crocodile Man.

Yes, this series of easy-to-read chapter books was written by the same Alexander McCall Smith who penned the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series for adults. I have enjoyed almost all of McCall Smith’s adult fiction titles, and I must say that Akimbo captured my heart, too. I read Akimbo and the Elephants in which Akimbo, who lives “in the heart of Africa” and “on the edge of a large game reserve,” bravely foils the plans of a gang of elephant poachers.

The prose was easy to read and still engaging. The print is nice and bold, and the entire story is only sixty-eight pages long. This one would appeal to seven to ten year olds and be simple without becoming boringly babyish. The hero of the story, Akimbo, is about eight or nine years old, and if his adventure is a bit unbelievable, it’s the kind of escapade an eight or nine year old boy would like to perform. The illustrations are by LeUyen Pham, the same artist who did the Alvin Ho books, and if I ever write a book, I want her to illustrate it. Look at Akimbo on the cover. Isn’t he the epitome of boyish mischief and bravery?

The White Giraffe by Lauren St. John.
Dolphin Song.
The Last Leopard.
The Elephant’s Tale.

Of this series, called Legend of the Animal Healer, I read the first and second books. The series is set on a game reserve in South Africa, and the protagonist this time is a girl, Martine, who has a special gift for understanding and healing animals. In The White Giraffe Martine becomes friends with a one-of-a-kind white giraffe named Jeremiah (Jemmy for short), and together the two again foil the plans of a gang of poachers. There’s a mystical element to the story since Martine is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy and carries a special gift related to animals that she must learn to use wisely, and the underlying message of the story keeps edging from ecological responsibility over into nature worshipp-y silliness. But in the first two books at least, that second message is subtle enough to be ignored if you want.

The bad guys in Dolphin Song are not exactly poachers, and the action in this one moves to the ocean and the islands off the west coast of South Africa near Mozambique. Martine is still saving endangered animals, dolphins this time, and the story is again exciting and suspenseful and a bit mysterious and magical. However, Martine comes across as a real girl with her own problems getting along with her family and making friends with her classmates. These stories are for a little older age group than the Akimbo books, nine to twelve years old, I’d guess.

I recommend Akimbo and the Animal Healer books to any children who are interested in books set in Africa or fascinated by African animals and their preservation. I’ve been reading quite a few books set in Africa lately, and these are some of the best children’s books I’ve found so far.

The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone

May15

Doesn’t everyone like miniatures? Miniature furniture? Dollhouses? I had no idea that The Art Institute of Chicago had a collection called The Thorne Miniature Rooms:

The 68 Thorne Miniature Rooms enable one to glimpse elements of European interiors from the late 13th century to the 1930s and American furnishings from the 17th century to the 1930s. Painstakingly constructed on a scale of one inch to one foot, these fascinating models were conceived by Mrs. James Ward Thorne of Chicago and constructed between 1932 and 1940 by master craftsmen according to her specifications.

Now I want to go see the miniature rooms. Have any of you been there?

The SIxty-Eight Rooms is a fantasy story for middle grade children (a la Narnia or N.D. WIlson’s 100 Cupboards) about entering into different times and worlds through the rooms in the Thorne Collection. I thought it was great, and it reminded me of so many favorites:

Like the Narnia books, The Sixty-Eight Rooms is about children who find a way into another world, or at least another time in our world.

Instead of 100 cupboards, there are sixty-eight miniature rooms and the worlds they open into, waiting to be explored.

As in the magical books by Edward Eager and E. Nesbit, the magic in The Sixty-Eight Rooms has certain rules that children must figure out as they go along. The magic in these books is something that must be discovered and its rules obeyed if the children want to continue in their adventure. Any Which Wall by Laurel Snyder is another book in this genre.

As in Masterpiece by Elise Broach and Chasing Vermeer and the other art museum fiction books by Blue Balliet, the central setting for the adventure in The SIxty-Eight Rooms is an art museum. Kids can learn a lot about art and artists from all of these books while enjoying a cracking good story at the same time.

Like Claudia and Jamie in the classic From the MIxed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Jack and Ruthie in The Sixty-Eight Rooms must figure out how to spend the night in the museum without being caught, and they explore some wonderfully luxurious museum rooms, too.

What I’m saying with all of these comparisons is, if you liked any of the above books, authors, or series, you’ll probably enjoy The Sixty-Eight Rooms, too. And it looks as if, judging from the ending of this first book, there will be more books to come about the magic of the Thorne Rooms. The ending, by the way, was satisfactory, but definitely left room for a sequel.

To Come and Go Like Magic by Katie Pickard Fawcett

May11

To Come and Go Like Magic is a middle grade fiction title about wanderlust, about wanting to leave home and see the world and yet wanting to know that there will always be a home to return to.

The story is written in short, vignette-style chapters, each one giving a glimpse into the life of twelve year old Chileda Sue Mahoney of Mercy Hill, Kentucky. Chili Sue is growing up in the heart of Appalachia in the 1970’s, the same decade that I experienced adolescence. My small town childhood in West Texas may have been a bit more filled with opportunity and vision than Chili’s, but I understand the general theme and feeling of the book: how Chili Sue wants to travel, go somewhere, see foreign places, and how she fears that her dreams will never come true.

Lots of good, growing-up, wisdom in this book:

On losing friends:
“One day at the Piggly-Wiggly, Melody Reece was wearing Ginny’s sandals. Last year we traded. . . . I stopped in the aisle that day holding a head of iceberg lettuce and a dozen eggs with my eyes hooked on Melody’s feet. Her toenails were painted neon purple and this completely ruined the natural effect of those sandals. Suddenly I realized–this is how it happens. One day you occupy a spot in a pea pod where you trade shoes and T-shirts and secrets, and the next day your spot goes to somebody else.”

On leaving home:
“I always figured Lenny would leave and not look back, but he says even when your number-one goal in life is to leave a place, you might still want to remember it.”

On respect:
“Pop says this is just like a VISTA. They like to show the dirt roads and the shacks and the barefoot kids on television and leave out everything that’s good and pretty. We’re not down her to promote tourism, they say, when anybody complains. But in these hills even kids with shoes go barefoot. We like to go barefoot. We get stung by honeybees till our feet swell up and turn red and itch like the dickens, but barefoot is who we are.”

On sweetness:
“Well,” she says, “you could be a real sweet girl if you didn’t sass.”
I look at the floor. Sweet. That’s the last thing on earth I want to be. You can find sweet all over the place. Mercy Hill’s cup is running over with sweetness.
“I don’t want to be sweet,” I say. “I want to go places . . . I want to really go places, like travel to the other side of the world.”

To Come and Go Like Magic is a good, gentle, dare I say sweet, story about growing up in the hills of Kentucky and trying to figure out life while living it and listening to all the voices around you giving you all kinds of different advice. Chileda Sue finally charts her own course, concluding, “I can leave Mercy Hill, but Mercy Hill won’t ever leave me.”

Willow by Julia Hoban

Apr24

Willow is a book about self-injury, cutting, but it’s also about how something like cutting doesn’t really define a person. Willow, the heroine of the book, is much more than just a cutter. She’s a beautiful girl, who blushes easily. She’s an imaginative girl who loves Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. She’s capable of sacrificially someone else, even though she’s in such pain herself that it is all she can do to survive each day, sometimes hour by hour, even minute by minute.

On a rainy March night, Willow’s parent asked her to drive them home after they had a little too much wine at dinner. Willow tried, but she lost control of the car in the driving rain, and her parents, both of them, died in the ensuing accident. Willow survived, but her pain was too much to bear. So she began cutting to relieve the pain. The principle is that physical pain cancels out emotional pain, and Willow doesn’t know how to stop.

Enter Guy (yes, his name is Guy). Guy accidentally finds out Willow’s secret, and he considers himself responsible for Willow after she convinces him that telling her older brother/guardian about the cutting would destroy him. Slowly, Willow and Guy begin to trust one another, and then fall in love in spite of the barrier stands between them—Willow’s inability to allow herself to feel and her love-hate relationship with self-injury.

The book mostly eschews easy answers (just quit! why hurt yourself like that?) and goes for the power of love and patience to heal all wounds, even deep trauma like Willow’s. I was quite impressed with the author’s ability to get inside the head of deeply hurting seventeen year old like Willow and find not only the emotional pain hidden there, but also the personality and strength that it takes to overcome that pain and live through it. This book would be an excellent read for teens dealing with this issue in their own life or in that of a friend or relative.

Unfortunately, the author felt it necessary to have the teen couple in the book engage in premarital sex, an act that brings healing in the book, but that I think would be more confusing and unsettling to a teen who’s already dealing with serious emotional problems. I’m also not sure that telling teens that all it takes to overcome a serious addiction like cutting is the persistent love of a good man is quite the right message. Even though the patience part is emphasized, it still comes across as redemption by true love within 300 pages.

Some other resources for reading about and coping with self-injury and depression:

To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.

Blade Silver: Color Me Scarred by Melody Carlson.